ARTIST STATEMENT

I am curious about America's cultural conceptions of the “everyday, functional object” and find myself wanting to playfully challenge those notions within the parameters of pottery. While my work aligns itself with the detail, sophistication and beauty of a bygone era, my desire is to evoke an air of 21st century, daily extravagance. I question the seeming incompatibility that seems to exist in our current consciousness between function and adornment, and challenge myself to make the connection.

Some of my recent work plays with the idea of vintage lingerie as architecture —allusions to intimacy through detail defining form. So I am utilizing the culmination of formal elements and aspects of allusion of corsetry and garters to express sensual softness. My flower boats and vases suggest beauty holding beauty and my boxes, intimacy holding the intimate.

In addition to clothing (Elizabethan to couture), pattern and metalworking from a range of time periods, places and cultures, have also long been influences in my work. I use accent and repetitive patterns to compliment or define the form. Patterning ideas come from fabric, jewelry, architecture and more. Brass, silver and pewter forms—Islamic to American—offer me suggestions for form, function and surface. My choice of monochrome color for the pots relates to these metal objects; the simplified color allows the pattern to coexist with and not dominate the form.

Form, function and ornamentation are of equal importance to me as a potter. I am ultimately interested in formal investigations of line and detail to define form for functional pots.