Included in the MFA Thesis Exhibition, Found & Lost, at the
University of Nevada Reno at Lake Tahoe (2023)
The Landscape of Grief (2023) is a collection of ceramic objects atop a floating, rectilinear kiln-shelf plane, creating a ceramic “landscape” covered with the residue of recent firings. The ceramic objects, artifacts of this process, are organized like an excavation site while referencing offerings and rituals performed after death, mourning the loss of a material as it transforms. Despite the intensity of the firing process, the resilience of the material and its ability to be transformed are visible in the objects themselves, their surfaces painted with the path of the flame, the result of heat, a change in atmosphere, and chemistry. The transformative processes involved in ceramics—from forming to firing clay—become metaphors for human resilience, adaptation, and metamorphosis. The kiln becomes a crucible where clay is hardened, irreversibly, into a ceramic artifact. Included within the installation are a grouping of saggars– cylindrical, wheel-thrown, ceramic containers– filled with various wheel-thrown porcelain and stoneware objects packed within layers of used, spent, and discarded ceramic materials along with organic materials such as shells, paper, bones, hair, and plant matter. The form of the cylinder represents the limitless potential of a form, the starting point of learning to throw on the wheel, while also historically being used as vessels of protection, keeping the ware within them safe against the harsh conditions inside the kiln.
