2018, 35.5" x 12" x 7" , Media: Colored porcelain, Earthenware / Terracotta, Firing Process: Electric, Low-fire, Surface: Oxide, Unglazed
Hemp porcelain
2019, 39.5” x 24" x 60.5” , Media: Earthenware / Terracotta, Firing Process: Electric, Low-fire, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Oxide
yellow ochre, terra sigillata, mortar, steel, putty
2019, 3.5’ x .75’ x 8’, Media: Earthenware / Terracotta, Firing Process: Electric, Low-fire, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Glazed, Oxide
nickel black oxide, ambrosia mason stain, terra sigillata, glaze, iron, putty
2019, 13” x 16" x 36.75" , Media: Earthenware / Terracotta, Firing Process: Electric, Low-fire, Surface: Oxide, Unglazed
rutile, putty
2019, 40” x 25” x 55” , Media: Earthenware / Terracotta, Firing Process: Electric, Low-fire, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Glazed, Oxide
manganese dioxide, terra sigillata, glaze, wood, putty, paint, linen made by my Granny
2019, 44” x 25” x 364”, Media: Earthenware / Terracotta, Porcelain, Firing Process: Electric, Low-fire, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Glazed, Oxide
glaze, terra sigillata, gerstley borate, fabric from my mother's childhood friend
2018, 14.5” x 13” x 40”, Media: Earthenware / Terracotta, Firing Process: Electric, Low-fire, Surface: Oxide, Unglazed
2020, 25” x 18” x 36”, Media: Earthenware / Terracotta, Firing Process: Low-fire, Oxidation, Surface: Engobe / Slip / Underglaze, Oxide, Unglazed
hemp terracotta, terra sigillata, cobalt, black nickel oxide
2019, 13” x 8” x 5”, Media: Earthenware / Terracotta, Firing Process: Electric, Low-fire, Surface: Glazed
2020, 39” x 20.5” x 17”, Media: Earthenware / Terracotta, Porcelain, Firing Process: Electric, Low-fire, Surface: Oxide, Unglazed
hemp porcelain, hemp terra cotta, burnt umber, putty, paper
Artist Statement
Frequently moving around the country throughout childhood, I developed a deep sentimental attachment to the living spaces and things that surrounded me. With constant change, I found that a relationship with an object goes beyond its utility becoming a way of archiving our place in time. Collected objects carry familial continuity and hold a sense of belonging. Using the iconography of the domestic, I explore the emotional valence and affect of interiors, exteriors, as well as the spaces in-between.
My work stems from family traditions of weaving, gardening, and jerry-rigging. Sensitively documenting objects in clay, baskets, chairs, and screens all stand in for a felt experience. Through the addition of hemp fibers and the strain of kiln firing, I seek to create ceramic forms that viscerally move. It is in the balances and tensions between pattern and plainness, soft and heavy, stable and precarious, that my work lingers. Both intimate and monumental, the objects and interior spaces I create speak to the perennial need to be and belong.
-- Anna Valenti
Bio
Anna Valenti is a ceramic artist born in New York and raised throughout the United States. She weaves and pinches clay vessels ranging from pots to chairs to screens. Her heavily touched installations highlight the emotional valence of crafted spaces and the objects that inhabit them. She received her BA from the University of Colorado Boulder (2014), practiced there again as a ceramics post-baccalaureate student (2017), and received her MFA from the Maine College of Art (2020). Her research is in hemp clay bodies. Anna is the recipient of the Creative Entrepreneurship Grant (2019) and NCECA Graduate Student Fellowship (2020). She has exhibited nationally at the Visual Arts Complex (CO), Bray North Gallery (MT), Tippetts & Eccles Gallery (UT), Soo Visual Arts Center (MN), New System Exhibitions (ME), and Hyde Museum (NY).