2015 NCECA Emerging Artist - Kelly O'Briant
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•421 views
Kelly O'Briant is a web developer based in San Francisco. Her website kellyobriant.com serves as her online portfolio, showcasing her skills and experience building responsive websites using modern technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Visitors can learn about Kelly's background and view examples of her work on both personal and client projects.
More Related Content
More from NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts)
More from NCECA (National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
2015 NCECA Emerging Artist - Kelly O'Briant
- 43. kellyobriant.com
Editor's Notes
- Thank yous:to NCECA for this honor from NC: Penland School and Kathryn Gremly, Ronan Peterson and Emily Dings, Tom Spleth, LT Hoisington, Satsuya Kotani, From AZ: all of my graduate colleagues, particularly Tiffany Bailey, Tristyn Bustamante, And Rico Piper, Peter Held, Mary Beth Biskin, Elizabeth Kozlowski, Janice Pitsley. Susan Beiner, Sam Chung, Kurt Weiser, Last but not least, someone whose support makes gallivanting around from the east coast to AZ to ND and who knows where next so much more fun: my partner Matthew Thomason
- I’ll be discussing the transition from being a functional potter to making installation sculpture and how I came to make the body of work for the exhibition, one day, late in the afternoon… which is currently installed at the Houston Center for Contemporary craft. I spent about ten years working as a fulltime potter before I decided to attend graduate school in 2011. For the majority of that time my studio was in this Remodeled the barn
- on the farm where I grew up in NC
- I think those years really informative, to both the content of my work and my daily studio practice… in that I still make multiples, think about objects in groupings
- work repetitively…and I often begin my day by making a few mugs until I feel like I’m fully present in the studio
- Gatherings around food are important communication mechanism for me and my family, and in the community where I grew up. When we are planning to get together, the first thing we say is, “well, what are we gonna make? Eat
- So much of how we catch up, relate and communicate takes place around planning, preparing and consuming food. (and I don’t mean that it’s always a huge production, it might just be grits and eggs and papaw cooks some bacon!) about the communion, the meal. In the community of Julian, it might have been a covered dish supper, the icecream supper (everything was “supper”) or a meal after a funeral. And with both family and in the larger community situations, it was, and still is As much about the
- the aftermath as it is the production and meal: because the meal keeps going in a way, as the dishes are cleared, washed, put away, moved around, we get to the nitty-gritty of how everyone is really doing begins …
- Early on, my interest in making dinner ware came from a place of wanting to connect with the user, to cause her to pause and connect with her company and the food, to take note of the moment, the here and now, to be present. Several years into my production business, found myself striving to make objects that functioned so well, that they could be used everyday, easily and fluently, without pause.
- Simultaneously, People would often buy a piece from me and return later to tell me all about what happened when they gave their mother in law the vase or their best friend the mug. But, the stories were not about the objects, they were about the relationships, the emotions, the activities and memories. And it was so humbling to realize that somehow I had quietly been inserted into this moment, into someone’s story via this object. In retrospect, I realize this is when my interest began to shift from the utilitarian function of an object to the stories and activities happening around these objects.
- I’m interested in how the objects witness, or facilitate communication and relationship, and the stories told through the placement of objects, in addition to utilitarian function.
- Come to think of objects that rove around in a space as we work and live in a space, as transient still lifes, as groupings of objects that come and go through out a day in a space
- They morph, change, seem to not make sense even, if you weren’t there to know why the wrench was left with the blender…for example.
- In 2013 I went to Hungary for a residency with my grad colleagues and afterward travelled to visit several more ceramic factories and see friends.
- As it turns out, Preparing food and dining with them, watching their patterns and habits, like my friend pekka who always wears his swimming goggles while chopping onions.
- witnessing them go about their days in their space.
- turned out to be an important way for me to get out of my own space, out of my own stories
- , and to consider the fact that there is much exposed about the human condition,
- through our habits, patterns and rituals and even our relationships and interactions with other people.
- I’m interested in how our patterns and habits are revealed through the placement and combination of everyday objects in our intimate spaces, such as the casual distribution of breakfast dishes across a countertop.
- I try to create still lifes that at first glance, conjure familiar scenarios…. While retaining incongruous details…like blades that are too long to turn…. in this piece, the potter’s sink.
- These little instances of incongruence's that cause a little hesitation and uncertainty as in this precarious stacks of pots and pans, that I hope Speak to precariousness or vulnerability of our lives and relationships and the Balance and awareness that is needed to be human…that we certainly don’t achieve all the time.
- The function of these objects is often ambiguous, and certain technical components, such as the absorbent matte white glaze that would soak up every greasy handprint or coffee stain, do in fact render the pieces unfunctional.
- I use Porcelain because it is effortless in it’s recording of the contemplative process of coiling and pinching clay on it’s surface. It retains each mark and touch left behind (Much in the way the still lifes record information about us in their placement and relationship.)
- interested in how this tactile memory is juxtaposed with the stone-like, permanence of the fired material…how these imprinted finger marks can literally be set in stone, recalling the remnants of the makers action.
- The pinched surface gives the objects a sense of humanity and energy at rest…and,
- The finger marks on the surface tell you that you cannot actually grate cheese or roll biscuits with these objects, and in that way they are very honest about what they are.
- Interested in how color effects the overall mood of this body of work. The white surface of the pieces, with its slight shimmer and depending on how they were fired, reflect a warmer or cooler tone, as is evident on the surface of the 25 graters in piece Recurring Dream
- Many pieces also reflect a small amount of color from objects near by, for example The cool blue and green tones of the broken egg shells in the piece Two Dozen Each remind me of “outside light” and I think lends a calm feeling to a piece that speaks to the excess of recent activities…
- I think of the small bowls and cups of seeds in Cabinet for Small Offerings as little alms, little bargains made with the world at large or some unknown, that for me relates to this ethereal golden yellow glow.
- I use titles to impart small hints of additional meaning or to disrupt what the viewer may think about groupings of objects that are otherwise familiar.
- The proximity of the showerhead to the tub in this piece Joy Bath is awkward and the glowing strands of water are uncanny. There is something lovely and playful, yet awkward about this space that is not really a bath, that I think layers feelings of anticipation and vulnerability, leaving one feeling slightly exposed And excited all at once.
- There is something very basic and real about a bowl of pinto beans. In the piece Late Supper: Pintos, the small pull-tab
- peeled from a new carton of milk and discarded on the table, and the bench seat worn in one spot lend a solitary quiet mood to the piece.
- But the amber window pain provides a balance that lessens the loneliness.
- Drawing plays an important role in my studio practice…draw at home often, take to studio, use as blue print to make ceramic objects, then draw the ceramic objects. and this serves as a way to consider the same IDEA in another dimension
- I enjoy ghostly airy atmosphere that happens around the objects when I use chalk pastels…
- And the drawings show process, similarly to the clay surface, showing the remnants of objects that aren’t there anymore or were moved….
- I am attracted to the uncertainty, awkwardness and precariousness of being human, the balance of vulnerability and safety, of excess and not enough and circumstances that are illuminated by our daily habits, rituals and communications.
- I hope to communicate these emotions in my work through my choices about ceramic processes, materials and arrangements of objects.
- I try to emphasize this precariousness, the awkward moments coupled with the pleasurable, joyful ones. My intention is to expose the core of the human condition, if you will, something that we all can relate to, through personal aesthetic and individual preference.
- I am currently living in ND, exploring still lifes in a more formal sense. They are less about incongruence's and specific narratives, and more about intentional placement, relationship and broader ideas about the parts that make a whole. Because my past as a utilitarian potter has influenced my sculptural work, and I find myself motivated to revisit the realm of function and production as a parallel practice. I want to explore the results of working between the actual function of a production line and the idea of function as it exists in my installation work, and how they are beginning to inform each other.
- You can learn more about my work, sign up for my newsletter and contact me here on my website: kellyobriant.com, connect with me on instagram, twitter and FB through my website… Thank you.