Recently I’ve been working with a group of ceramic artists here in Saskatoon whose work has been inspiring to me in my own practice. I’m thrilled now to have the opportunity to work more in depth with them, gaining a new and more thorough understanding of their work, process and inspiration, all the while making some pretty fun work that takes me out of my everyday of studio work. I think for me at least, it can become a bit routine in the studio, working in isolation, and I benefit quite a bit from working with others and having the opportunity not only to work, but to talk about work and get into the dirt of why it is that we make what we do.
Here’s the basic premise of what we’re doing so far…we wanted to create some collaborative work, but where to begin? Each of us has a firmly established practice, aesthetic and technique. What we’ve set up as an exercise to get us going is not unlike the childhood game of telephone. If you don’t know the game, it begins with one person whispering something to another who then passes it on to the next, etc, etc. As children this saying would often get altered with humorous results once it had passed through a number of kids. So how we’ve undertaken this in the studio is that we’ve each begun with a piece of work by each of the other artists which we then make a response piece to. Then we meet as a group, discuss the pieces and see what’s been percolating in each others minds/studios. Then back to the studio again to respond and make new work based on the pieces we saw. With each successive piece the work gets further and further removed from the original through the work of a different artists hand. Make sense?
We also decided to deal with vessel forms to give ourselves some focus and an underlying premise to unify the finished work for exhibition. Our interest in the vessel is in part because of the functional research in all of our practices and because the vessel has been one of the most recognizable and central aspects of ceramic history and tradition throughout all cultures. Essentially a utilitarian object it has been a subject for representation of cultural aesthetics, ritual and visual history. The vessel can be both read universally as well as a signifier of specific personal, cultural, and geographic interpretations. Despite the contemporary focus on quantity over quality in industrial production of functional wares; the vessel and the craftsmanship of its creation by hand alongside the multitude of perspectives and aesthetic renderings, still remains a focus among contemporary practitioners of the ceramic medium.
We have yet to document any of the work, but when we do I hope to post it here to further show you what I mean. In the meantime here are some images of the work of these amazing local talents.
Zane Wilcox
Paula Cooley
and Bonnie Gilmour
This project we’ve undertaken will be exhibited in 2009 in Red Deer, AB and hopefully here in Saskatoon as well.
