Vanessa Norris

I make playful, voluminous forms, taking care to add small details only visible from closeup. The monochromatic white palette acts almost as a camouflage among other plain manufactured mugs or against gallery walls; to discover the tactile oddities and depth of surface, you must lean in, must touch, must learn to look. I’m a lover of words and how we piece them together, much like clay, to create meaning; I often derive inspiration from idioms because I’m interested in how we perceive the world through the lens of certain phrases. My current body of work refers specifically to cloud related idioms (every cloud has a silver lining, there’s a dark cloud on the horizon, get your head out of the clouds, on cloud nine, etc). What interests me about these idioms in particular is how the cloud is seen as both a positive and negative force depending on the context. A dark cloud on the horizon brings rain, perhaps a storm, but also provides the nourishment for plants to grow, for life to form. The recognizable iconography of the cloud–the caricature, if you will–provides an access point to enter the language of my work, allowing space for reflection on the role these simple phrases play in our lives.

— Vanessa Norris

Vanessa Norris grew up in a small town in Maine and spent much of her time drawing and observing as a young person. Craving to get out of her comfort zone, she enrolled at MassArt to pursue a life of working with her hands. It was there she discovered and cultivated a love for clay. Since then, she has moved across the country several times to work for different ceramic artists, including Bruce Larrabee in Park City, UT and Deb Schwartzkopf in Seattle, WA. Vanessa is now a production potter for a studio in Boston and instructs clay courses for children and adults. She resides in Everett, MA where she set up Dirty E Studios with her partner and fellow MassArt alum, Gustavo Barceloni.