Floral Burst, ceramic, cast glass

Disease is an experience that radically transforms life through its ability to force a debate on human suffering and survival.

Due Feuilles, ceramic, bronze

My work is a hybrid of human cells and plant forms that share the pursuit of survival and beauty of the natural form.

Physiologia, ceramic

Untitled, ceramic, cast glass

Work In Progress

Pastel Botanica, ceramic, cast glass

Equilibrium At Odds, ceramic

My goal is to illuminate the precious balance of life and beauty of the natural world, while revealing the temporary symbiotic relationship between health and malignant cells.

Helen Otterson’s website

Want daMuse To Showcase Your Work?

The best, best ways to have me find your work are easy and effective:

1.  ‘Like’ the DAM page on Facebook and comment on posts there – I very often look at profiles/websites of people who take the time to comment on my FB posts and I have found many artists for DAM posts that way.

2.  You can also post comments on the blog here  - I always check websites of commenters on DAM.

3.  Another easy, effective way of having me find your work is to embed a link to Daily Art Muse on your own website – when traffic comes in to this site from another website I check out the website it’s coming from.

Yes, you can also write to me and I LOVE hearing from you, but please know that I receive dozens of emails every day, including artists asking me to post about their work, galleries who want me to post about an exhibit, questions from readers regarding how and where to purchase work they saw on the blog, friends of artists who hope that a post on DAM will give their friend a boost in sales. . .you get the picture.

Though it might take me a few days to see them if I’m in ‘very busy’ mode (like now when I’m teaching a class), I do read all of your emails, but because they come in at such a rapid rate they fall off my radar screen quickly – even if the work is something I would post on DAM – it’s just the nature of the beast that email has become.

Unfortunately I don’t have time to respond to most, as emails from students, advertisers and others in my network must take priority.  I hope you understand.

I do want to see great contemporary fine craft from YOU and your colleagues – because I want to share it with all of DAM’s readers. Really I do. So find DAM on Facebook, comment there or on this blog and link to the website – I’m watching, I promise! It’s how I found Helen Otterson – it could be how I find you.

“It’s crazy out there. So I retreat to my inside world. The one where I can breathe and calm myself. Clay serves as the vehicle for my meditation; it speaks without words. Everything that I feel is automatically transferred to the clay through my hands. This is my voice, not heard but seen.”

Dwellers

I Am Many

Thought Directs Energy

This too:

“Oversized feet symbolize the strength to stand alone in the face of opposition. An admirable concept to believe in but not always an easy one to live by. I’m not just talking about the “big” issues of the day either, I’m talking about the decisions we make on a daily basis that define who we are and what we believe in.”

Ego’s Guilded Cage

Surrender

Jacquline Hurlbert’s website

Read the rest of Hurlbert’s artist statement here.

From the Branch Series

From the Sprout Series

Ward  works with youth and senior art programs, offering classes in clay and mixed media. She also brings art to the youth of Haiti through Project HOPE Art.

From the Nest Series

Ward holding a Sprout before firing {via}

Ward in her studio {via}

“My work focuses on how organic forms interact and engage with the space they encompass. I create abstract arrangements reflecting the biological world of seeds, pollens, bones, shells and entomology.

Watch the artist at work in this short video clip.

Jenni Ward’s website

More images in Ceramics Now Magazine

Experience Clay on Facebook

Istvan Hollo’s tumblr site – the first picture is one of the pendants on a model – not who you might expect. Nicely done.

Turquoise Is Loneliness

Surely I hit the jackpot with this artist’s work and at first I just smiled broadly at the colorful snails and rabbits and elephants and ponies and birds and pigs. . .

Yellow Basket

Then, as I began to read about Walgate, who has a BFA, MA and MFA, I realized that I had been purposefully pulled in so that she could expose me to her larger message. Brilliant.

Red Rebus Stroller

Child Of A Gentle Mother

Her intent is to create sculptural accumulations of animals that “reflect the culture of acquisition and display of possessions, along with a conscious animal welfare subtext which comments on the care, use and detainment of animals.” She uses more than 75 different plaster animal molds – some new, others old, discarded molds – to slipcast her menagerie.

Each assemblage contains anywhere from fifty to two hundred animals glazed with vivid colors. Walgate places the realistic and cartoon-like animals in familiar childhood objects – old strollers, wagons, carriages and toy boxes – stacking and gluing each collection.

After all of that magnificent color, the piece that struck me the most was Before You Judge Me, pictured below – powerful, true, a message for all of us.

Before You Judge Me

Before you judge me, try hard to love me.
Look within your heart then ask, Have you seen my Childhood?

Wendy Walgate

“Mounded together, having imposed upon them an improbable upward climb over and on top of each other, the animal “objects” settle into a precarious harmony. The use of commercial, ready-made molds to create identical animals over and over again signifies mass production, genetic replication and loss of identity.” Wendy Walgate

Wendy Walgate’s website

Walgate in Branch magazine – her one sentence of advice is a good one.