Balance of excess in color,
adornment, and form is a challenge to achieve. Joyce St. Clair is pushing hard to find
and defy this balance. Her functional pottery teeters on the edge of this
balance while she seems to not actually care whether or not there is such a
thing as “too much”. This works to St. Clair’s benefit as her work takes the viewer
into a much richer and decadent reality while using and living with her work.
The viewer is also given a source of endless entertainment within the mass of
decorative elements lumped together; eyes can pass from flower to flower to
brilliant swirl to leaf and back a hundred times in a unique order always with
new shapes and colors and glaze runs to enrich the experience. St. Clair’s
forms are quite elegant and exaggerated while retaining some very strict
utility within their stable feet, generous rims, and comfortable handles. While
red, blue, and green are colors we constantly see in nature, there is something
slightly supernatural about St. Clair’s glaze palette, which regains humanity
when it loses control, running and pooling over the clay.
adornment, and form is a challenge to achieve. Joyce St. Clair is pushing hard to find
and defy this balance. Her functional pottery teeters on the edge of this
balance while she seems to not actually care whether or not there is such a
thing as “too much”. This works to St. Clair’s benefit as her work takes the viewer
into a much richer and decadent reality while using and living with her work.
The viewer is also given a source of endless entertainment within the mass of
decorative elements lumped together; eyes can pass from flower to flower to
brilliant swirl to leaf and back a hundred times in a unique order always with
new shapes and colors and glaze runs to enrich the experience. St. Clair’s
forms are quite elegant and exaggerated while retaining some very strict
utility within their stable feet, generous rims, and comfortable handles. While
red, blue, and green are colors we constantly see in nature, there is something
slightly supernatural about St. Clair’s glaze palette, which regains humanity
when it loses control, running and pooling over the clay.
St. Clair earned her BFA in Ceramics from University of North Texas in Denton, Texas and her MFA from Wichita State University in Kansas in 2014. She was named an Emerging Artist of 2015 by Ceramics Monthly and is currently a long-term resident at Red Lodge Center for Clay in Montana.
Thanks again to our great Guest writers from Ceramics Artists Now. Make sure to check out their website for more amazing ceramic based artwork.
