My First Blog
Hello and welcome to the inaugural blog of my bouncing baby website!
My goal for this first post is to bring current developments in my work up to date for anyone who may be interested. In future posts, I hope to tease out the intersections between my artwork and my inspiration, and to keep track of research, projects, and teaching opportunities. This all is bound to be awkward at first, but I hope it will grow sleeker over time!
After completing my BFA at UAF in spring 2018, I lived and worked in Fairbanks until September 2019, when I moved back to my hometown of Portland, Oregon. I then lived with my gracious parents and brooded on the next chapter. I got a poodle puppy named Marko in October, began renting a ceramics studio in December, and moved into a house with friends in February.
My work has changed since my undergraduate thesis. Unexpectedly, the new work owes a lot to walks with Marko. This ritual prompts observation of each day’s microseasons-- a new bud pushes, an old bloom wilts. The rain turns to hail, then suddenly sunshine explodes through. Even on my sourest days, I’m moved to muster some gratitude. This silly dog, my happy shadow, keeps me on my toes and in my heart.
As a baseline, my work is about curiosity and community, about making associations between unlike things. I’ve learned to trust the part of my brain that “doodles”, and the images, motions, and silhouettes it generates. If I want to make a cup that feels like walking in the rain with my dog in the soggiest part of the Portland winter, how many ways can I underscore that idea on a canvas that is forty square inches? I think about cooking. It’s as though you’re making a dish that is all about onions, and you need to figure out how many ways you can layer that ingredient into the meal. You have raw onion, green onions, caramelized onions, charred onions, dried onions, onion-infused oil, pickled onions, chives-- they all give us a different angle on the same ingredient, but we’re left with a variety of flavors that sing at different frequencies. So, if I think again of a cup about walking in the rain, I meditate on the direction of the rain, the feeling of the moisture seeping into my inadequate jacket, the rhythm of droplets splashing on my hood, the dog’s wet nose, the overgrown hedges, and all the little clues of a world inhaling on the very edge of spring.
From a technical standpoint, my post-thesis work is constructed the same way as my thesis work was. I build all of my work by hand, without the use of the potter’s wheel. I roll coils and slabs of clay and attach them together, smoothing and scraping to shape the form. As I form my work, I constantly handle it-- my touch is all over each piece, mannering every surface. I hope that this care is apparent and brings joy to the user. I often build several pieces at once, which allows me to work in series. Timing the wetness of the clay is so integral to ceramics, and I work on several pieces at once in order to manage moisture content in the clay so I can add attachments and manipulate surfaces at the optimal times.
I like red clay because it comes with such glorious baggage. I associate it with utility and domestic industriousness, orange terracotta pots, brick, rusty tools, crusty bread. It also provides a midtone on which to layer either a darker or lighter color, which for me generates immediate interest! Sgraffito and inlay foster a deeper surface, especially when, as potters, we have a matter of millimeters to tell a story. I work my surfaces while my pieces are still in the “greenware” stage (i.e. unfired) rather than during the glaze process. This way I can push colors around and work the soft clay surface back and forth, as a draftswoman brandishes her charcoal, subtracting and adding material, deepening darks and pulling up highlights. This painterly process enriches the associations that the user might make. The more engaging the surface, the more a user might experience and observe each time they use the piece.
And now, as the season ripens fruit and the started vegetables fuss for transplantation: Covid-19. What is important to do as a maker right now? What is important to do as a human right now? What is the role of ceramics in a Covid and post-Covid world? Who has expendable income for art? How can art making and enjoyment be equitable? Who can argue that art is necessity and not luxury right now? What is the role of our most precious mutable medium in rebuilding the world and enfranchising our humanity? I take comfort in the way ceramics is in our most immediate and our most esoteric technology.
I’m reminded of a quote that I once heard that was something to the effect of “artists create problems so that they can solve them.” I’ve been curious for a while about harvesting wild clay, and current events have galvanized me to dive in. I ask myself why this is important to me. This is a problem that I am creating for myself. My perception is that processing wild clay is time-intensive and requires lots of research and testing. As a kid, I remember making mud balls and pinch pots out of the tan, clayey soil straight from a hole in the yard. I think I’m yearning for that immediacy, that connection to place-- and maybe just a little bit of magic.
As a start to what I’ll for now call the Wild Clay 2020 project, I recently fired a small sample harvested from Gaston, Oregon. It went startlingly well, as I was very braced for disappointment. There was a visceral alchemy in watching that wild material transform from a greenish-gray to a chocolatey brown as the iron therein took on an oxidized expression. I felt like I had turned lead into gold! The doodler in me pricked her ears. I think this is cool, and I want to know more about it, and I think other people would also find it cool. So perhaps there is an element of education that I want to explore that would feed my curiosity and be able to bring the glee to others.
If any of this resonates, I encourage you to browse the images of my recent work in the Shop. Drop me a line in the Contact page. Check out the images in the Galleries. I’ll be keeping galleries of new projects up to date.
I’ve got lots of dreams in the works. Someday I’ll have a newsletter!
Thanks so much for stopping by. Stay safe.
Sara Hensel,
May, 2020