Wild textures and primal colours: new ceramics on show in Calgary

 

On show at BEX Vintage and Mr Mansfield Vintage in downtown Calgary. I’m honoured to be sharing their art wall with Lisa Brawn’s stunning woodcuts this May--and you can find more work from local artists amongst the mid-century modern and vintage goods. It’s always fun to walk into a shop and find that you covet lots of their stuff…it’s making me feel very much at home!

BEX Vintage & Mr Mansfield Vintage

1124 10 Ave SW, Calgary, Alberta, CANADA

The ‘Archean Spring’ group of vessels and vases is the result of everything, everywhere seeping in as I added glaze colours to a group of hefty porcelain forms, weaving it around their intense textures. I was capturing a feeling that I, or maybe the rest of the world, might just melt or explode…listening to the news, waiting for spring. 

The colours are molten, and layered—like a young Earth, back when the oceans were far more green, less blue. A period when the chemistry of colour changed through fluctuating oxygen levels, asteroid bombardment, volcanism, and the recycling of the earth’s crust. Life began, and somehow kept going through all of that. These vessels were intuitively made, based in my response to the clay; the shapes echo life-forms, and they are caught up in a cycle of modern volcanism, as the heat of the kiln disrupts and changes the character of the clay, causing cracks and distortions, and encourages glazes to run and merge. 

There are deliberately modelled structures on some of the forms, grounding the work in this time—in a modern life, surrounded by urban, concrete, brutalism. There are holes too, places where structure might have fallen away. I tear the material as I work, so adding and modelling details becomes a way to reinforce, to hold back and block decay. I have a need to rebuild like this, to make good, and find balance; I accept that my making process is tough, and I need to reciprocate for that by embedding time, growing the forms slowly, allowing them to rest so the clay can physically regain strength within its molecular structure. Nature can be harsh and brutal, “red in tooth and claw”, and so too the white hot heat of the kiln, reflecting how this work came to be: working thoughtfully while letting go of expectations, allowing decisions to become fluid, experimental, encouraging a molten spring to happen.

Please email or DM through my instagram, Facebook or Bluesky pages if you would like to know more about any of the pieces. Lots more images from this collection and my studio over on my socials.