Carla Potter Essay Example for Free

Carla Potter Essay Ceramic artist Carla Potter draws on her roots near the ocean to create sculpture that call the sea life to mind, bringing the vibrant ocean-themed pieces so nearly to life once can almost smell the salt air. With a piece called â€Å"Leviathan†, she inspires the beauty that perhaps an ancient sea monster might not have been able to, and throws in a bit of the serenity of the oceanscape and a fair amount of â€Å"What is that?’ In her artist statement, Potter says that it is the receeding tide that inspires her work. Her medium is clay and though some of her sculptures are also ceramic vessels, much of her work is simply brilliant renditions of the sea life brought back to life with glazes and paints designed to keep them looking wet long after the tide has rolled back out to sea. Potter is from Ketchikan, Alaska, and went to the lower 48 to study dance. While there, she discovered there she could â€Å"express grace† much easier through using just her hands instead of using her entire body (Biography, 2007). She eventually turned her studies to ceramics and earned her bachelor of arts from Humbolt State College (Biography, 2007). Then, Potter wrote athe website that local friends convinced her to act as artist in residence at the elementary schools in her home town for the next decade while raising her own children. During that time, she also participated ins everal solo exhibits throughout Alaska and many juried and combined shows in the rest o the country. Her work can be seen in the Alaska State Museum and several private museums across the state as well as in many private collections. In 2005-2006, she was the artist in residence for the Archie Bray foundation (Archie Bray, 2006). Photographs from Potter’s final exhibit at Archie Bray are available online and show some of the versatility of her work while remaining true to her basic theme of ocean life. In her artist’s statement, Potter writes, â€Å"Flashing golden seaweed, heaps of tumbled, coiled and strewn kelp fronds create a slippery veil over the busy worlds of crabs, tiny fishes, anemones, invertebrates and every texture and color of starfish. It is a wet, three-dimensional brocade that evokes the lavish costumes of can-can dancers or ladies of the night.† Even her words flow as a warm and fun description of the sea themes, but fail to do her work justice. While â€Å"Leviathan† is a simple piece, invoking the image of a stray tentacle sliding up through a pile of damp mussels, her â€Å"Rock Oyster Pitcher† is a maze of tiny details feeling like a pitcher that has been too long at the bottom of the seas and is covered in coral (Artist, 2007). The lovely pitcher calls to mind shipwrecks and lost treasurers and the wonderment that it has somehow survived under the sea. Of particular interest is the delicacy that Potter reflects in this work done in 2000 when compared to the more substantial â€Å"Leviathan.† The other joy of looking at Potter’s work is that she is able to meld form and color to make the viewer feel as though she is about to reach out and touch shells fresh from the sear. Her piece â€Å"Flamenco† from 2002 looks like a sea anemone and feels freshly plucked from a crystal blue tidal pool.(Potter 2002 Collection, 2007). The piece definitely harkens back to the artist’s statement about her work, when she wrote,† Though the look and feel of my work is inspired by life in and around the edge of the sea, the subject matter is closely paired with my experience of culture. I love to combine the pokey squishy surface of a sea cucumber with the dubious comfort and form of Victorian furniture.†(Artist Statement 2007). I love the concept of combining nature and the uptight form of formal furnishings. Her work is like a way to bring the seaside indoors without the stench of something dying in a shell and without having to kill the animal that once called the shell home. Potter’s work is an invitation to those of us who have only seen the sea through old Jaques Costeau images or through Hollywood’s lens. Instead of the highly stylized colors of Hollywood, we have the imagination and memories of a woman who spent her life on the Pacific Ocean and wants to share that love with the rest of the world. Her works somehow manages to call to mind the texture and feel of the tidal pools, an effect she managed to achieve through years of experiments with high temperature glazes (Artist Statement 2004). â€Å"For the past three years I have been experimenting with porcelain and high fire oxidation glazes. These glazes have a surface that is dense with an elusive depth and beauty. The coloration effects would be impossible to replicate with under glazes. It also provides me with a new avenue to explore the marriage of color and form unburdened by objective representation.† (Artist Statement 2004). Indeed the combination of the porcelain and high fire glazes has kept her work with the wet look and the delicacy common to many maritime animals.   An interesting twist in Potter’s work was the creation of a Cake Topper in her 2006 collection. The piece features classic images of Adam and Eve standing in a garden of green barnacles and black mussels. (Potter 2006). The figure work is reminiscent of Michaelangelo’s David, complete with the lack of arms below the mid-bicep. The piece is very classic in feel and amazing given the size of the piece. The piece is just 16 inches tall (Potter 2006). This may be my favorite of the pieces that Potter has on display at her website. It is a wonderful combination of the history of art and the addition of natural beauty to an indoor art piece. The idea that nature’s beauty can be brought inside via Potter’s work is very appealing to me. I find Carla Potter’s work to be inspiring and technically proficient, something that I believe is missing from many modern artists. Her delicate work in porcelain shows that she has the technical abilities to carve lifelong humans and the attention to detail to make a mollusk shell that looks like I should be able to pop it open and have mussels for dinner. The combination of elements makes the work feel much older and more valued, instead of feeling like modern art, something I am not as fond of. WORKS CITED â€Å"Archie Bray Foundation†, http://www.archiebray.org/residents/Potter/Potter.html, November 7, 2007. â€Å"Biography†, http://carlampotter.com/bio.htm, November 7, 2007. â€Å"Carla Potter’s Artist Statement†, http://www.carlampotter.com/statement.htm, November 7, 2007. â€Å"Carla Potter 2006 collection†, http://www.carlampotter.com/, November 7, 2007.