Ann Mowris Mulligan Endowed Professor

The Tipping Point: The Road to Professor

Disclosure:

I Was honored to be chosen as a one-year recipient of the Ann Mowris Mulligan endowed Professor. This past several months I have identified a format and materials for my research. I have begun to engage with testing and development. My work has benefitted from this focused arena of research. I have begun some documentation of a series thus far.

Abstract:

I have my sights on the next professional achievement at RIT. I plan to go up for promotion to full Professor. I have been developing a new body of work over the course of the past couple years. I am ready to focus on this body of work and begin greater momentum of production for exhibition. The work combines traditional techniques with digital tools, to combine narrative imagery with the vessel. This body of work will be shown in two planned solo exhibitions with in 3 - year time frame as well as some smaller scheduled exhibitions.

Project Narrative:

Pots are intimate by nature. The history of ceramic objects to commemorate and document our culture is rich. At their essence, containers, pouring and serving vessels have the potential to provide a utilitarian experience that is potent and full of meaning. These objects provide both a utilitarian and ritualized experience. My research focuses on objects that plumb this deep history. Utility, as the focus of my research, continues to be an essential concern, but I am most intrigued with the ability of pots to transcend themselves as objects and convey information. The ability for the work to draw relationships to history and culture through form and surface content holds my fascination.

Technically, I explore surface development, ceramic science, and material research. My investigation questions the boundaries of the motif and narrative on a three-dimensional vessel. When does the motif integrate with the ground, become unified, and narrative in nature. This research also includes comparative collection studies, analysis of useful objects, historical surface examination and the experiential process of continuous making.

The most relevant, influential and culturally potent objects fraternize with an edge, exploring the moment where an expected beauty becomes deconstructed, where familiar objects are reconsidered. I am interested in the tipping point between elegant and awkward, crude materiality and refinement, utility and meaning, an object as it connects with its history and surface narrative. I question conventional beauty within historical forms. The familiar object becomes the artifact, speaking of multiple histories and the nuanced and complex relationship we have with objects in our everyday lives.

Chinese and Persian vessels, Korean Buncheong ware and early American slipware, comprise a multiplicity of sources that come together to inform this body of work. These are all cultures that have used motif to not only adorn the vessels, but also to speak to ideas and narrative.

Culture accumulates in layers upon our objects of use, ritual and prosaic. My own intentions are to shed light and perhaps even give reverence to this cultural dynamic. By referencing these important histories and reinterpreting some of the techniques with a contemporary approach. Digital technology combined with traditional forming and surface techniques provide a new lens through which I wish to both show reverence to and reinterpret these techniques.

My work with both the jar form and serving forms explores a process called Mishima in which a patterned impression is made in a dark clay. The clay is then loaded with 3 layers of white slip and then scraped to reveal the inlayed pattern. These pieces are then fired in an atmospheric kiln, motifs are painted on the fired surface with glass enamels and then refired to create a narrative. These 2 surfaces work in tandem to provide a deep surface, a rich ground on which graphic imagery acts as if it floats. I have found that designing digital tools to create the impressed pattern allows for a diverse approach as well as a very personal approach to imagery. Motif and narrative, as it wraps a vessel, has a rich potential to create new histories and tell new stories, or shed new light on age old stories. My work often uses flora and fauna to explore relationships we have with the natural world.

I participated in an artist residency during the summer, 2023, at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts. The group I worked with is a group of former and current ceramic professors. We worked from a theme, “Embracing Change”. The time was spent making, critiquing, and discussion of ideas. Summer, 2024, I have been invited to attend a second artist residency at Relodge Clay Center. Similarly, I will be in discussion with a prominent group of ceramic artists, making and critiquing and exploring new ideas. In year three, I will be actively mounting 2 solo exhibitions.