Jason Hackett: Laborer, 2011, Ceramic, gold leaf, 38” x 12” x 12”
ceramic artist
Patricia Sannit
Patricia Sannit’s profile on Ceramics Now Magazine - View her works
“The impulse to decorate is strong. The push to create a border or impose a structured order on the already beautiful order of the (chaotic) natural world is compelling. Humans have always done so.
My work draws from and responds to visual idioms found throughout human history. Visual languages flow from culture to culture and through time; I explore how the changes of motifs and technologies show development and transformation in societies. I draw from our species’ long and intimate relationship with our surroundings, both natural and man-made. To that end, I use a variety of mostly found and repurposed clays to refer to both the contributions of previous makers in our collective art history and the stratigraphy of the Earth. My work is influenced by archaeology, geology, industry and the commonality of human experience through time and across culture.” Patricia Sannit
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Patricia Sannit received her BA in ceramics, Art History and Norwegian from the University of Minnesota and her MFA from the California College of Arts. She now lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Sannit’s work is influenced by her experiences excavating in the Near East and Ethiopia. Sannit’s most recent project is a large-scale ceramic installation, Citadel, based on an archeological site in Iraq. “I am interested in the story of the earth, our species, and pots. History is manifest in the scarred and worn surface of our planet and in a pot well made and well used.”
Patricia Sannit: Eroded Poles, 2012, 12”x9”x11”, cast, carved and incised found and reclaimed clays, slip and stain
Patricia Sannit: Ely glacier, 2012, 6”x12”x11”, cast, carved and incised found and reclaimed clays, slip and stain
Patricia Sannit: Apollo column, 2011, 30”x12”x12”, cast, carved and incised found and reclaimed clays, slip and stain
Patricia Sannit: Earth Orbit, 2010, 10”x9”x11”, cast, carved and incised found and reclaimed clays, slip and stain
Patricia Sannit: Double Cylinder, 2011, 6”x7”x6”, cast, carved and incised found and reclaimed clays, slip and stain
Patricia Sannit: Hemisphere 1198, 2008, 8”x12”x12”, cast, carved and incised found and reclaimed clays, slip and stain
Bente Skjøttgaard
Bente Skjøttgaard’s profile on Ceramics Now Magazine - View her works
“The basic elements in my work are the materials: clay and glaze. I enjoy engaging in expressive ceramic experiments that test the boundaries of material and form.
I often take my point of departure in nature’s principles and regularities of form. This results in strange inscrutable sculptural growths and large wild and amorphous nature abstractions that may be both lush and melancholic with an expression of beauty in both growth and decay.” Bente Skjøttgaard
“Bente Skjøttgaard is a ceramist: she was born in 1961. In much the same manner as a runner or an existential philosopher, she is cultivating her material, which is clay overcoated with an application of glaze. She is a master of her field and she is “inside” the clay in the sense that she is challenging herself each and every time she creates a new work. The glazed pieces are constantly becoming larger and more voluminous, with interiors consisting of complicated constructions, as is the case inside a person or an animal, a prehistoric creature or another biological phenomenon. And the beauty cannot be mistaken. It is a kind of primeval nature, but accordingly a nature that is created both from within and from without, in the course of a protracted reciprocal interplay.” Excerpt from “Elements in white”, a text By Erik Steffensen - Professor at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.
Bente Skjøttgaard: Clouds, Purple white cloud no 1002, 2010, Stoneware and glaze, hand built, 37 x 55 x 27 cm. Photo: Ole Akhøj
Bente Skjøttgaard: Traces – Art along Hærvejen, a project by the Danish Arts Foundation, detail, 2010, Red brickwork clay
