Be. Art. Ceramics Process - B.E. Art Ceramics

Imagination is Freedom

For those of us who are not full time artists, making and creating happens in small moments between 9-5s, making meals, tending to our physical health, and connecting with loved ones. They are tucked away moments of true delight, wonder, and gratitude. These small moments are a necessity in my practice. They offer times when I affirm that my creative skills and intuitions are worth expressing through the ups and downs of life.

The freedom of imagination held me as an artist before I had the courage to do the same. Each gesture, color choice, medium experiment, and subsequent piece becomes an expression of how to cut through unrelenting images of suffering. In the cut, between the folds of uncertainty, rests my imagination / my worldview/ my argument that we can achieve a world where life, living, and liveliness matters.

Abstract drawing of a giant person sitting next to a small building. There are whirls in and around them that make up the shape of houses and buildings.

And it All Starts with a Sketch

Black pen an dink drawing of a landscape with a cluster of buildings.

I started drawing cities before I took up pottery. I loved the simplicity of repetition and orientation and what they suggest for how we build meaning and spatial logic. Drawing one line at a time and rotating them around a piece of paper is how I recognized my style and voice. I wasn't looking to draw cities. I let the image come to me and used what I saw as a natural starting place for what could come next.

Much of my work comes from what feels right for each vessel. I don't sketch. I just paint. My method means there are no mistakes. There are only pathways and gestures toward worlds and ways of arranging a built environment that can only be communicated through the medium, the space allowed, the news, and my mood. Each piece is highly relational and exists as multiple snapshots of how we make meaning from small repetitions in space and time.

So, thank you to everyone who shared what they see in my work. Your words are affirm I’m on the right creative path.

Three beige vases with small black speckles. Each has a black abstract city drawn on them. The clay is called speckled buff.

Inspired by Nature

A pink/purple upside down triangle bush.

A nature shot of a plant with long green shoots reaching towards the sky.

Nature is the ultimate gesture. I take pictures of plants and practice the forms they create so they become second nature. Having a repository of reference materials also helps me understand how the forms should flow and how to add weight to repetitious lines and shapes that will become muddled if I'm not careful.

I’m looking for form and flow because I work mostly in black and white. I work on layering with varying degrees of line density in order to create separation between forms.

A plant inside a building that drupes at the top and has small round leaves sticking out from its stem.

An Iterative Process that Never Ends

A pottery wheel with a smashed pot at it's center. There's also a wiring tool showing the artist split the pot in half.

Close up of a group of small pots drying under plastic. The photo is taken under the plastic.

Colorful rectangular test tiles. Test tiles are used to gauge how fired clay with work with your decoration technique.

My search for the right medium will never end, but at the moment I'm in love with clay and simple pen and ink drawings. There is something about clay as a body that shifts and changes and leaves space for whatever I might imagine that I haven't felt with another medium.

Four small obsidian clay vessels decorated using sgraffito.