Ceramics/found objects, 3’x10’x6’, 2011
Photo of: Ceramics, Paper and Potters Bench, Dimensions Variable, 2010
Pinched Black Stoneware Yellow Slip, 3¾”x4”x4”, 2013 and Opaque Glaze, cone 6
Pinched Porcelain and Polychrome Glazes, cone 8, 3¾”x4”x4”, 2013
Pinched Porcelain and Polychrome Glazes, cone 8, 4½”x5½”x5”, 2013
Pinched Porcelain, Polychrome Slip & Glaze, cone 8, 4 ¼”x4”x4”, 2013
Ceramics, mixed media & found objects, 10’x38’x12’, 2008
Ceramics, Calcium and Hand-cart, 4’x25’x10’, 2008
Ceramics/mixed media, 14”x16”x15”, 2012
Ceramics/mixed media, 8’x8’x8’, 2008
Artist Statement
What if I told you that I am not so sure of what to make of things; that I am reminded, “this too shall pass,” only this feeling doesn’t quite seem to… And what if I told you this is what propels me to make artwork?
Reminded of this, I work intuitively positing questions and working out explanations through objects, actions, words, and ideas, often intuitively and without the luxury of rationalization’s authority. I work to create elliptical frameworks guided by the knowledge that if we can recognize something, we can overlook it too.
The work traverses functional forms and sculptural ceramic objects as starting points for larger compositions. These larger still-life compositions hybridize ready-mades, vernacular styles of home building supplies and fine art materials. The work is grounded in the phenomena of clays and glaze, the ceramics process, and historical context. I aim to explore linkages between what we can recognize and what is difficult to apprehend while considering the recursive links found in forms, materials, critical texts, and day-to-day experience, creating work to elliptically index and challenge our sensibilities of self and world.
When successful the work gains flexibility with my allegorical usage of materials and concepts. Fired ceramic objects relate to an implied sense of security through durability, while at the same time moist clay and slip remind us that we, like our spatial relations, are in flux. Appropriated objects point to our contextualization in this world of artifacts with meanings and histories that are beyond ours, while spatial relations reveal our proximity and sense of urgency and desire.
This practice fuses light with shadow, utilitarian forms as well as ceramic objects with the phenomena of moist slip, and an assortment of appropriated ready-mades, to conduct a study of the terms of our embedded-ness. This is a query of how we might be more cognizant of, our selves and our things, and can belong to a place & time while simultaneously (re)conceiving the world as we move through it, one step at a time, glimpsing, experiencing, and adjusting; exploring & figuring out through doing.
-- Ian Meares