Lauren Mabry NCECA Emerging Artist 2014 Ceramic Works
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Lauren Mabry: Gallery Expo Talk
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Lauren Mabry NCECA Emerging Artist 2014 Ceramic Works
- 3. Cylinder, 11”h x 11”w x 11”d. Red earthenware, slips, glaze. 2011.
- 4. Cylinder 7.5” h x 9” w x 9”d Red earthenware, slips, glaze. 2010.
- 5. Cylinder (interior) 7.5” h x 9” w x 9”d Red earthenware, slips, glaze. 2010.
- 6. Cylinder (view 1 and 2) 13.5”h x 12”w x 12”d. Red earthenware, slips, glaze, 2012.
- 7. Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Abstract- Kansas City, 2011.
- 8. Curved Plane 25”h x 56”w x 15”d Red earthenware, slips, glaze. 2012.
- 9. Curved Plane (detail) 25”h x 56”w x 15”d Red earthenware, slips, glaze. 2012.
- 10. Curved Plane, 24”h x 60”w x 15”d. Red earthenware, slips, glaze, 2013.
- 11. Fragmented Cylinder, 22”h x 24”w x 26”d. Red earthenware, slips, glaze, 2012.
- 12. Cylinder (view 1 and 2) 11” h x 11” w x 11”d Red earthenware, slips, glaze, china paint. 2012
- 13. MFA Thesis Exhibition at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2012.
- 14. MFA Thesis Exhibition at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2012.
- 15. My current studio: The Clay Studio of Philadelphia
- 16. Glazing in process Cylinder 11”h x 12”w x 12”d, Red earthenware, slips, glaze, 2013.
- 17. Glazing in process Completed work Cylinder 11”h x 12”w x 12”d, Red earthenware, slips, glaze, 2013.
- 18. Running Orange and Blue. 20”h x 26”w x 8”d. Red earthenware, slips, glaze, insulated fire brick, 2013 Glazing in progress
- 19. Running Orange and Blue. 20”h x 26”w x 8”d. Red earthenware, slips, glaze, insulated fire brick, 2013 Glazing in progress Completed Work
- 21. Cracked Cylinder, 20”h x 28”w x 28”d. Red earthenware, slips, glaze, 2013.
- 22. Cracked Cylinder (detail), 20”h x 28”w x 28”d. Red earthenware, slips, glaze, 2013
- 23. Standing Plane, 22”h x 22”w x 5.5”d. Red earthenware, slips, glaze, 2013.
- 24. Standing Plane (detail), 22”h x 22”w x 5.5”d. Red earthenware, slips, glaze, 2013.
- 25. Composition of Enclosed Cylinders, 25”h x 38”w x 6”d. Red earthenware, slips, glaze, 2014.
- 26. Pipe Form- 15”h x 24”w x 24”d, earthenware, slips, glaze, 2014.
Editor's Notes
- I’ve been coming to NCECA since 2008 and it’s always beenmotivating to attend the emerging artist lectures. I couldn’t be more thrilled that it’s my turn. It’s an exciting added bonus to be in my home state. I want to take a moment to say “thanks” to my teachers, mentors, motivators, friends, and ceramics family. In my short talk today I will show you the spectrum of work I make and a little bit about how I make it.
- I’ll begin by showing you one of the simultaneously best and worst things I’ve ever made. These are by most standards really ugly, impractical cups. The exterior is dry and porous and the interior looks like melted crayons, which is a terrible way to ‘set off’ your morning coffee. The grad critique of this work was devastating in a word, but for some reason I still thought there was something so great about it. I couldn’t pin it down for a while. I’d been making pottery since my freshman year of high school and struggled to see glaze as anything other than “the stuff you use to finish a pot”. Nothing was the same after I figured out I had it all backwards. Its safe to say that We’ve all made terrible work. I’m showing you mine, to hopefully show you that the worst thing you make has the potential to become a watershed moment in your work. Now that I’ve humbled myself I’ll move on.
- Low fire clay and glaze were very new to me at this time, so I had no presumptions about how I should be making things which really freed up my intuitive impulses. I started with white slip, a couple base glazes, and set to work building a palette of colors. Since glaze was quickly becoming my primary focus I spent a good amount of time working on different forms and I arrived at the Cylinder. It was the best shape to show off my energetic, colorful surfaces. The Cylinder is quiet. It doesn’t fight with the glaze, in fact in many ways it amplifies it.
- This kind of work is wheel thrown. I trim them and then prime the leathery surface with thick white slip as a base for layering more color. As I thought more about the importance of the Cylinder, it played over and over in my head that such a simple structures makes an ideal canvas. It was a perfect contrast to the vibrant activity and depth of the surface. I also realized that such simple forms are more complex that what meets the eye. For me they function as both a 3-D object and a 2-D image. The way I perceive any form, the edge functions as the frame of the image. So, when you look at it in profile, The cylinder has a rectangular outline around it in space.
- It also reveals an ellipse, volume, and interior space for the painting to wrap into. There are infinite compositional viewpoints, inviting prolonged interaction with the viewer.
- I’m showing you 2 views of the same piece. You can see the way the interior and exterior play off of one another. On the left you see saturated running glazes which are then echoed on the interior. My painted surfaces tend to wrap around the entire piece. I like to think of myself as a calculated risk-taker with a keen attraction to color and movement.
- Right around the this time in school I was painting Cylinders over and over. My piece was curated into an exhibit titled Abstract- Kansas City at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. Seeing my work presented in a context with large abstract paintings, I knew I was hitting an important mark. I continued to paint Cylinders, but branched out into more forms.
- I call this form a Curved Plane. It’s mounted to the wall like a traditional painting, but it bows out into space with mass that’s almost intrusive. At roughly six feet across and two feet deep, I think of these Planes as an expanded, blown up slice of a Cylinder. When I’m planning a work of this scale I often translate a favorite passage from an existing Cylinder. In that sense, the Cylinders are like sketches I pull from and repeadedtly study for new information.
- The absence of representation in my work allows the marks, brushstrokes, and color to communicate. A mixture of emotions, from cheery to ominous, comes forth through drips, swipes, and splashes of color that vie for attention. I create energy through formal dualities. For example, aggressive and passive elements are adjacent to one another. Bold hues mingle with quiet tints and shades. Contrast is so basic, but so powerful.
- The surfaces sometimes look weathered and aged while at the same time appearing colorfully lush and wet. There is a sense of immediacy to the mark making, and at moments, a sense of play.
- Some of my forms are cracked, broken, or cut with a masonry saw. When the materials react unexpectedly, I respond by emphasizing flaws where others would be inclined to hide them. Sometimes I intentionally apply glaze absurdly thick so it will run off the piece, leaving behind dramatic drips of color and recording its movement on the surface. I leave this evidence of my process, which tells the story of the piece itself. I celebrate these characteristics of ceramic materials rather than perceiving them as failures. My aim is still to find beauty and make aesthetically resolved work.
- Here is another example of a Cylinder, viewing from two different angles. I included it in this order to show another way I sometimes deal with the many things “go wrong” with. How many of you have made a fantastic piece, and seen it self destruct in the glaze firing?We are used to dealing with a laundry list of flaws- such as crazing, dunting, cracking, crawling, and in this particular case- shivering. After the glaze firing large sections of the surface flaked off. I filled in those areas with hues of green and orange china paint adding yet another layer of vibrancy to the piece.
- This is an installtion view of my 2012 MFA thesis show at the University of Nebraska Lincoln which I included so you can see the relative size of the pieces.
- Here is another shot of that show, and yet another type of form I paint on. It’s A wedge shaped piece, composed on both sides. After the glaze firing I cropped the piece on a brick saw until I was satisfied with the composition. I leave the smooth edge of clay on top, exposing the core of the material. With that being said, the work isn’t always finished just because it’s been fired. I often continue to consider what the work needs beyond the glaze firing.As of this spring It has been exactly 2 years since this thesis show, and in that relatively short time it’s safe to say I’m still working with the same ideas. First I moved for a summer residency at the Archie Bray Foundation, and then directly to Philadelphia where I’m currently a long term resident at The Clay Studio.
- These are images of me working in my current studio. I’m going to discuss a little bit about my process right now, and the importance that it actually plays into the content of my work. These are fairly straight forward. One is a mixture of coiling and throwing, and the other of me glazing a bisqued piece. I spend a lot of time experiementing always pushing forward, never trying the same thing twice.
- This is a“Before and After” comparison to illustrate my glazing procedure. At this point in the photo I am applying the glaze and imagning how it will look after the firing. There is buildup, tension, and release that happens and While I’ve practiced a long time with these glazes, there is always an element of the unexpected.
- This is the side by side transformation. People ask a lot if I’ve ever painted That questions always throws me off a little bit. Yes, I’ve spent years before and during art school working with oil paints and acrylics to depict figure and still life. Yes, I have a solid background in drawing and color theory. But in regards to abstract work, no I have not painted it with paint. For me, the driving factor is the unique transformative quality of glaze which happens with firing. I pay careful attention when I’m composing my surface, and I pay even more attention to how the works feels afterward.
- This is an example of a piece where I set up a “failure”. I applied the glaze very thick, envisioning that it would run down the face of the form and drop over the edge. Because I anticipated the running, I set the form on soft brick during the firing for easy removal.
- The title of the piece is “Running Orange and Blue”. You can see the debris and kiln brick that fused to the work at the bottom edge. I display the work as it is, letting it me raw and immediately accessible.
- So, this is a picture of a sewer pipe. Being that the Cylinder is such a fundamental part of my visual vocabulary, I tend to notice them everywhere. ESPECIALLY when they’re make of terracotta. Near my home in Philadelphia I passed this piece of sewer pipe daily. I thought a lot about glazing it, and how the colors would run down and over the bottom edge of the form. I think a lot about the fluidity of glaze and just how far can I get it to run. What does running mean, and how does it feel?
- The finished piece, titled ‘Cracked Cylinder” was the central sculpture in my exhibition at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art.
- Behind each piece I make, there is usually a question that motivates me. In this piece titled “standing plane”, When does a sculpture become a painting?
- I wonder. as I look at the way the color cascades down the face of the flat form, and then suddenly enters the 3 dimensional realm of the viewer…And when does a painting become sculpture?
- At some point I began making smaller enclosed Cylinders. After they really started accumulating in my space I began to play with arrangements of them. I enjoy the freedom of being able to move around the color and line to create a composition. The same way a painter can change, or edit, their piece- so can I, moving their pieces around like a sort of collage. As I mentioned before I have referenced the Cylinders as sketches and in this case, many small sketches and individual units build up into a larger piece
- This is my most recent work, completed only about 10 days ago. The form is inspired by the pipe, once again. It’s sole purpose to amplify the glaze and create interaction with the flow of glazes. It represents a culmination of my ideas with the Cylinder and surface composition. I am particularly excited with the direction of this larger work because there is an edge and grit to the work with cracks and pooling glazes which spill off the form. The thing to remember about me is that I’m a painter, but I’m indulging in the ceramic medium in a way that actual paint could never touch. I make sculpture that blurs the boundaries of ceramics and painting in a bold, expressive manner.
- Thank you, and please follow me online to see my newest work as it’s happening.