Abstract

The search for beauty, nourishment, and celebration of life can be found within thoughtful hand made pottery. These objects help create, recreate and bring together a community. The most intimate, personal, and enriching objects are useful and found in the home. I strive to create pottery for occasions, to celebrate a memorable event or to make the everyday routine include more significant moments. I want my pottery to be so captivating that a viewer will be compelled to interact with it. My hope is that the use of these pots will create more significant moments within the user's life. While producing and sharing my work, I also wish to share concepts of nature, nurture, community and support of a social message. There have been many people that have inspired my work through conversations and dialog including teachers, and class mates. Formal inspirations include, historical ceramics, biological structures such as plant seed pods, crustaceans, and other forms found in nature that have presented an inner and outer contrast. The balance between outside and inside space is a driving force in my work. For example, the crude outer shell of an oyster juxtaposed against the smooth, pearly inside. The contrast of rough to smooth is also a statement of contrast of form and surface. Pottery is both visual and tactile, capitalizing on the unique quality of being a multi-sense media. The intense focus on the creation process is such that, for me, process is inseparable from the product. It is of great importance that the evidence of an object's creation and the material of its genesis be a major presence within the work. Ceramic processes involve four elements of earth, water, fire, and air. Each is an essential component necessary to create the finished ceramic object. The philosophical idea of alchemy dovetails with the ceramic process. The four elements, as primal archetypes in our subconscious, intrigue me. My thesis body of work was created using and integrating the following concepts; * Celebrating the occasion or making the occasion a celebration through the interplay of art and function; * Contrasting and comparing the differences in nature between coarse protective exteriors and refined and sheltered interior objects; and, * Optimizing the opportunity clay gives the artist to communicate directly to others, hand to hand.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Pottery--Themes, motives; Pottery--Technique; Ceramic sculpture--Themes, motives; Ceramic sculpture--Technique; Nature in art

Publication Date

9-13-2008

Document Type

Thesis

Department, Program, or Center

School of Art (CIAS)

Advisor

Galloway, Julia

Advisor/Committee Member

Bushnell, Eileen

Comments

Note: imported from RIT’s Digital Media Library running on DSpace to RIT Scholar Works. Physical copy available through RIT's The Wallace Library at: NK4235 .B68 2008

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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