Vessels

 

Vessels are not a new subject for me. I had made a series of folded drawings back a few years and I repeatedly draw vessels in my sketchbook. But in 2017, I saw the show  “Things of Beauty Growing”: British Studio Pottery at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven and I was inspired to consider making three-dimensional vessels. I started them last fall and I am continuing to investigate size, proportion, surface. 

I see my vessels, both drawings, and sculptures, as protection for the female form. They hold and/or trap emotions, they represent the uterus, the safe space for new life. They nourish, they contain, they serve. 

One issue I am having is the pedestal. I have shown these so far on newspaper columns which I like but they are unsteady when they get too high. I have a plan to make them steady but that would require altering in a secret way with rebar running down the middle of the stacks of paper and it irks me, the “honesty of materials” keeps coming back to me. Possibly use the rebar so that it is visible? I need my fellow artist Scott Schuldt to help me figure this one out.