Roberta Massuch

My practice involves three separate, yet completely intertwined ways of working: ceramic sculpture, functional pottery and drawing. In the sculptural work, I construct compositions with minimalist, architectural ceramic forms which are coated with a film of directed or reflected light from adjacent, brightly colored surfaces. Based in color theory, these three-dimensional still lifes address the perception of objects and the spaces between. The pinched functional objects I create also emerge from these observations. Simple vessels with white exterior surfaces are inextricably involved with nearby objects; the surface of one will always affect the perception of another due to shifts in the intensity and direction of light covering the forms.

Drawings become a record of the light and shadows that force the eye to shift over forms constantly, causing static objects to appear to wiggle. It is this constant movement, this lack of clarity, and this distortion, which drives my studio explorations and reveals how I perceive and create relationships between the objects in the lived space. Each work I create shares with the viewer a particular type of looking: one in which the act of noticing an object transforming from one moment to the next becomes a silent, almost meditative experience.

-- Roberta Massuch

Roberta Massuch lives and works in Philadelphia, PA—where she is a Resident Artist at The Clay Studio, studio technician at The Community College of Philadelphia, & adjunct faculty at Tyler School of Art. She received her BFA from Northern Illinois University in 2005 and her MFA from Louisiana State University in May 2013. Past residencies include: Worcester Center for Craft, Northern Clay Center, and Tyler School of Art. She was recently awarded a 2015 Independence Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship, funding her participation in an 8 week Arquetopia Special Ceramics Artist Residency (2016) at the Arquetopia Foundation for Development, in Puebla, Mexico.