Artist Inspired Piece

Artist Statement:

For this assignment we had to find a contemporary artist to draw inspiration from for our final project of the year. The artist I chose to inspire my final ceramic art piece of the year is Jessica Stoller. Stoller’s work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Ceramics: Art and Perception, and N. Pandora Feminist Journal—as well as featured in recent exhibitions at Zuckerman Museum of Art, Georgia, Greenwich House Pottery, New York as well as many solo exhibitions. Stoller’s choice of material is a juxtaposition, she states in Maake Magazine, “I work with porcelain, mining the material’s historically weighted past and it is long-held associations with desire, taste, and consumption” and she creates beautiful works that are in extreme contrast to not only the materialistic usage of the materials, but also contrasts popular ideas about femininity, and identity. What initially drew me to her work was how busy it was. I loved that she uses a variety of techniques in her work to create something that is grotesque and chaotic. Her work at its core reflects insecurity about the human body, and she takes natural body phenomena that many people are insecure about and makes these “imperfections” into beautiful art. Everything that society tells people to be insecure about, she makes into something incredible and a bit questionable, which I absolutely love. Going into this piece I initially wanted to incorporate shells and aquatic plants, which would be a way to incorporate my own interests into the piece, but in the end I decided to create a pear with physical and symbolic anatomy to create a piece that was more grounded to Stoller. 

The materials I used for this piece was clay, and variety of carving tools, and lots of colorful glazes: PC-71, C-60, SM-44, HF-165, C-53, SM-20, C-20, and SM-1. I experimented a lot with the tools to create different forms as well as the glazes and different layering techniques, that I'm not entirely sure will work the way I want, but I'm excited nonetheless to see how they turn out. 

Overall I am really happy with how this piece turned out and I think it has a lot of character. I love how all the different elements and textures make the piece visually interesting. I was also surprised to see that one of the glazes I used on the abstract flower didn't actually produce much pigment, but I think it looks really cool because it looks a bit like mold. I think that it only adds to the meaning behind this piece that when you think of femininity it's not just perfect clean color flowers, it can be grotesque and messy and that's just how life is. The only thing I would change if i could would probably be a little more careful glazing and I would probably tried to use some more color and add more depth to the pearls. All in all, I think my mom will love it in her office!