I keep revisiting the idea of using tiles to create wall installations and assemblages. In the past we’ve looked at Heather Knight’s white-on-white textured porcelain tiles, Marcia Jestaedt’s raku tiles, arranged to form wall hanging kimono robes, and more recently, Nell Devitt’s smoke-fired clay tiles. We’ve also seen examples of resin and rust tiles, yesterday’s ‘Match Blox’ and Michelle Ward’s wood block assemblage.
Chris Gryder’s approach is organic, with ceramic relief plaques that have a fossil-like feel and an earthy color palette. Gryder’s tiles are appealing individually, or grouped to form multi-layered images and patterns. His work immediately grabbed me as I scrolled through the assorted 12″tiles, 8″ tiles, compositions and commissions on his site. More bas relief compositions on his flickr site. If you are going to be in Virginia next month, you can see Gryder in action during the Open Studios of Roanoke Annual Tour.
There is quite a bit of territory to explore with polymer clay that goes far beyond jewelry. Alev Gozonar is ahead of the curve, and someone to keep your eye on. She recently completed a series of wall installations for an Istanbul hotel (and they are amazing – perhaps she will share pictures with all of you soon). I look forward to seeing more work that crosses over into alternative areas and hope the artists mentioned here offer muse-food this Friday morning.
Susan – These recent postings reminded me that Dan Comier made a series of tiles. I believe he displayed it at a Ravensdale conference but he showed a picture of it during a class I took a while back. Maybe he would share that with your readers. I would love to see it again.
That’s right Sandy, Dan’s wall piece is exquisite. Paging Dan to the comments area!
Dan and Tracy will be unveiling their new website soon – I’m fairly certain that we will have the opportunity to catch more than a glimpse of the tiles on the new site. But if he wants to share before that…
Incredible! Another ceramic artist doing very cool wal tiles is Natalie Blake. Check them out at: http://www.natalieblake.com/ I’ve seen them at a couple of shows and they draw me in every time.
Here’s another artist whose website is worth checking out:
http://www.kimgrantdesigns.com/gallery.cfm
Kim Grant is a prolific artist from Minnesota who is known for her textural works, using primarily acrylic paint, in combination with wood, canvas, plexiglass and metal.
It’s so interesting to see different artist’s interpretation of the repetitive shape in relationship to form, texture, space and color.
Oh, Libby and Maureen thank you for those links! Blake’s tiles are almost other-worldly and Grant’s plexiglass tiles almost look like layered translucent canes.
And Maureen – don’t you think that the widely different interpretations remind us that there is room for everyone?