artist statement development

Debra Fritts Artist Statement

Looking at my work, I realize that I am a storyteller, but not in the usual sense. I build my stories in terra cotta clay , layering the surfaces with found object marks and fired colarants. These stories have no ending- nor do they contain answers to the questions they pose. They are inquistive, honest, and dwell on the mysteries and joys of daily living.

Each one of a kind sculpture is hand built, mainly using thick coils, then multiple fired. The pieces may be fired three to seven times depending on the color and surface that I'm trying to achieve. I approach the color on the clay as a painter. My palette is a combination of stains, glazes, oxides, slips, dry clays, underglazes and underglaze pencils. I mix- I paint, never exactly sure of the end results - another mystery. I enjoy the surprises!

King was featured as an Emerging Artist at the 1999 NCECA conference in Columbus, OH and a demonstrator at the 2002 NCECA conference in Kansas City, MO. She had a solo show at SPACE Lab in Cleveland, OH in 1999 and she had her first museum exhibition at the Erie Art Museum in Erie, PA in Fall 2002. Her recent exhibitions include "Taking Measure: American Ceramic Art at the New Millennium" at the World Ceramics Exposition 2001, Seoul, Korea, "National Ceramic Invitational" Blue Spiral Gallery, Asheville, NC, "Emerging Artists" at the Works Gallery in Philadelphia, PA, "Porcelain 2000" at Esmay Gallery in Rochester, NY, "Artists on Their Own" at Greenwich House Pottery in New York, NY, "Emerging Artists of the U.S." at the Vermont Clay Studio" and "Narrative Ceramics" at Odyssey Gallery in Asheville, NC.

Her work has been published in the books The Art of Contemporary American Pottery by Kevin A. Hulch, Teapots Transformed by Leslie Ferrin, Handbuilt Tableware by Kathy Triplett and The Glaze Handbook by Mark Burelson. Her work has also been featured in Studio Potter, Ceramics Art and Perception, NCECA Journal and Ceramics Monthly magazines.

View Kathy's full artist CV, in Microsoft® Word format.

Kathy King Artist Statement

In ancient times, Greek potters surfaced their ceramic vases with images of heroic mythology, religious ritual and drunken feasts attended by both gods and mortals. Each epic story played out upon the surface of the pot acting as a self-contained morality play thus preserving, in part, their culture for the ages. At the dawn of this millennium, I find myself inspired by these same artists, as I, a contemporary woman, attempt to depict the epic struggles of my own world. Included among these struggles are truth, beauty, love, hate, and vices (as well as unwanted facial hair).

From childhood onward, human beings are taught to surround themselves with substances to consume and adorn themselves with. The need arose to create containers that not only provided a function but also amplified the experience of the user. From the Attic Vase to the 20th century novelty coffee mug, much about the societies that provided these vessels can be read from the images on the pots. Our ability to reference the ceramic object through the functional use, decorative beauty, or historical placement, confers strength upon ceramics as a powerful vehicle for commenting on contemporary, cultural issues.

In my work I use ceramic vessels, tiled furniture and printmaking, either separately or combined in installations, which present narratives from a woman's point of view. My ideas are influenced by personal experience, and I often use myself as a character in the work. This presentation of personal narrative on ceramics through satirical humor, irony and sarcasm allows me to both celebrate and poke fun at my gender as well as myself. The combination of narrative presented on the surface, united with the contents or each vessel, allow a dialogue between function and narrative. Though each pot's narrative may contain the equivalent of a one-line joke, when the pieces are considered together they convey a singular theme in a serial format.

I am interested in mapping the ways that popular culture - including comic books, magazines, television shows, films, and a host of other forms help to shape and change how our culture views women. Popular culture does not simply reflect women's lives; it helps to create them and so demands critical scrutiny. My ultimate objective is to translate my own personal experience in relation to my culture, through narrative imagery on the utilitarian ceramic form. When I present these works in an installation, the stage is then set for my own epic tale of the struggles of mortals within our society. Though the urgency of these issues may range anywhere between morality to finding the right brand of cellulite cream, collectively, the human experience is recorded, as told through the voice of one woman.

http://web.onetel.net.uk/~victorbryant/histx106.html

The Ceramic Narrative

Matthias Ostermann

224 pages | 7 x 10 | 240 color illus.
Cloth 2006 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3970-6 | $49.95t | £32.50 | Add to shopping cart
Not for sale in the British Commonwealth, except Canada, or in Europe

The Ceramic Narrative is an exploration of past and present ceramic iconography concerned with the depiction of narratives, or with images meant to be thought-provoking, beyond the merely decorative. The book is beautifully illustrated with an extensive variety of work from history and the present day, showing how many contemporary artists continue this tradition with modern interpretations.

Examining ancient Greece, the ceramic imagery of the Maya culture, the ceramics of China, Persia, and Japan, European tin-glaze traditions, and the narrative imagery appearing on later European porcelains, Matthias Ostermann attempts wherever possible not only to present ceramic narratives in their cultural and historical contexts but also to refer to some of the older myths and sources that may have served as inspiration.

Applied arts writer David Whiting contributes an essay on the development of ceramic narratives in the twentieth century, while illustrations present the work of more than 75 contemporary international ceramic artists who explore narrative in distinctive and different ways. These include the exploration of mythologies and existing stories; personal visions, private stories and memory; the human figure, relationships and identity; political and social commentary; and finally, the ceramic object itself, seen as message and metaphor.

This book will serve as a beginning for further study of this fascinating and little-explored subject and as a celebration of the work of all ceramic artists whose passion is the ceramic narrative.

"This beautifully illustrated book is an exploration of past and present ceramic iconography concerned with the depiction of narratives and images meant to be thought provoking, beyond the merely decorative."—Ceramics Monthly

A practicing ceramicist since 1974, Matthias Ostermann lives and works in Montreal. He is the author of The New Maiolica: Contemporary Approaches to Colour and Technique and The Ceramic Surface, both available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

David Whiting, of the United Kingdom, is a critic and a writer on studio ceramics and the applied arts. He has curated exhibitions and contributes regularly to such magazines as Crafts and Ceramics: Art and Perception.