Assisted Nucleation

Bound

Twisted Synthesis

“I use manufactured elements in my work to create a tension meant to bring about a consciousness within the viewer, to open a dialogue about contemporary society’s association with nature.  This discussion can raise awareness of the danger that our current situation poses.”

Steve Belz website

Cable Hung Disk

McKinney creates the work in two studios – the artist starts in her ceramics studio and builds the forms, then moves to her blacksmithing studio to forge the metal components and back again to the ceramics studio when it is time to glaze.  The materials belong together in these sculptures – they serve each other well.  A true partnership.

Small Habitats

Small but critical elements distinguish the habitats – doors and windows are almost a suggestion – leaving the viewer to wonder and possibly move closer to peer inside. Ladders lead us into some of the sculptures – perhaps bridging the gap between known and unknown territory?

Tall Ladder Small Disk With Bird

Double Arch Doorway

Detail

I often contemplate the definition of home. What is home? Where is home? Is it an internal state or a physical space? McKinney’s work offers a gentle resting place for my eyes as I ponder these questions.

Virginia McKinney’s website

I don’t like to wear them or shop for them but I am fascinated by artistic interpretations of shoes and I own a growing collection of vintage shoe forms that make me smile. It is what it is.

Kate Hopkins-Searle hand builds decorative shoes from thinly rolled slabs of clay. She manipulates sheets of clay over a form, impressing patterns with hand carved stamps, draping the clay and adding pieces that look like fabric frills, bows and rosettes. Each individual shoe takes about 10 hours to make.

“It is difficult to explain my attraction to shoes other than it seems to be something shared with many women and is a theme I have been drawn to since making paper shoes as a child. . .” Kate Hopkins-Searle

“I am fascinated by the details of embroidery and beadwork and the drape and flow of fabrics and recreating the effect of these in clay.” Kate Hopkins-Searle

A peek at her sketchbook here.

Kate Hopkins Searle’s website

Bilateral

The hand-built sculptures take 4-6 months to create – after they are built Hild sands the surface until she achieves a smooth, thin surface.

Liaison

“Influence, pressure, strain. These words have been the foundation for my current projects that comprise communicating the theme in large, hand-built clay forms. Delicate continuously flowing entities in thin-built clay. They reflect varying degrees of external and internal pressures, and how, as a consequence, perception of inner and outer space is changed or challenged. My sculptures are bodies, exposed to pressure and movements.”

Spine

“It is a reflection of my inner landscapes of form. Everyday, I experience the tension between presence and absence. The anxiety I feel is both constructive and destructive. My sculptures show me the necessity of opposites; they are paradoxes. Bodies where presence and absence meet. The clay is the prerequisite for creating space, and space is the prerequisite for the form of clay. Empty space as well as clay are my materials.”

Hild in the studio

This video is not in English, but there is enough footage of Hild at work on several pieces that makes the clip quite interesting.

Eva Hild’s website

Deep Discount Today Only

If you want to learn how to create your own artist website, I am running a 24-hour special (2pm EST 1/23/2012 – 2pm EST 1/24/2012) for the Artist Online Seminars {DIY} Self-Study course. This deep discount is only for Artist Online Seminars newsletter subscribers. Sign up here to receive the special price (emails will be sent starting at 2pm with the super-sale price).

Cleaning Day Again

Playing With Myself
A solitaire game, the object of which is to “jump” and remove each of the 33 mini heads, one, by one…until you have only one little head…(or little voice in your head) remaining

Moody Judy
interchangeable heads – pick your mood and put it on the body, 28″ x 28″

The self-taught artist left a 25-year career as a costume supervisor in the film industry to pursue her art – in this case childlike, figurative objects with a narrative that helps them take on a life of their own.

A Circular Motion
31 ” x 16 ” x 16 ” ceramic, metal, wood turntable

“This is my visual reference to the all the good intentions that so many of us have and the bad, bad habits that seem to over-ride them……continuously…….over and over……in a circular motion.”

The Reason I Don’t Sleep At Night

“I am becoming increasingly intrigued by human behavior. The vast territory of the mind and it’s secret little spaces supply me with endless amounts of inspiration and abundant humor. I feel as though humor is the pressure valve of consciousness, a welcome respite from the austere rulings of that fat -headed bastard the ego, who has a tendency to let us all take our selves & lives a bit too seriously at times. I am also prone explore the regions of the sublime and the strange feelings of completion it is capable of creating.”

 

Kina Crow’s website

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