Ceramics

My ceramic practice primarily deals with ideas of moral instruction, humour and folklore. Influenced by English mottoware pottery, I explore how the ceramic vessel can be both ornamental and persuasive. Drawing on traditions of women’s decorative and intellectual labor, I am interested in reimagining vernacular rhyme, superstition and myth through the flat symbolic clarity of folk design. Read my full artist statement here. 

Working with stoneware clay, I apply layers of coloured slip before carving through the surface using the sgraffito technique. The process of carving away the outer skin of the vessel to reveal its image echoes my larger social practice of feminist historical recovery and archival research. Each line carved becomes a deliberate negotiation between concealment and revelation: what is visible depends on what has been removed.