Carla Potter Essay Example for Free

Carla fiddle screenCeramic artist Carla Potter draws on her roots near the ocean to create sculpture that come up to the ocean life to mind, bringing the vibrant ocean-themed pieces so nearly to life once can virtually smell the salt air. With a piece called Leviathan, she inspires the beauty that perhaps an ancient sea monster exponent not befuddle been able to, and throws in a bit of the serenity of the oceanscape and a fair center of 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 well-nigh of her sculptures are excessively ceramic vessels, much of her work is simply brilliant renditions of the sea life brought back to life with glazes and paints knowing 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 disc e reallywhereed there she could express grace much easier t hrough using just her hands instead of using her entire body (Biography, 2007). She eventually turned her studies to ceramics and acquire 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 nurture 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 square(p)ly as in many private collections. In 2005-2006, she was the artist in residence for the Archie Bray keister (Archie Bray, 2006). Photographs from Potters 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 artists statement, Potter writes, Fla shing 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, simply fail to do her work justice.While Leviathan is a simple piece, invoking the image of a stray tentacle slew up through a pile of damp mussels, her Rock Oyster Pitcher is a labyrinth of tiny details sentiment like a pitcher that has been too long at the get across 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 nether the sea. Of particular interest is the delicacy that Potter reflects in this work done in 2000 when compared to the more substantial Leviathan.The other joy of lookin g at Potters work is that she is able to meld dramatis personae and color to make the viewer feel as though she is about to reach out and repair shells fresh from the sear. Her piece 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 artists statement about her work, when she wrote, Though the look and feel of my work is inspired by life in and around the frame in of the sea, the subject matter is closely paired with my experience of culture.I love to combine the pokey mucky 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 veil the animal that once called the shell home.Potters work is an invitati on to those of us who have only seen the sea through old Jaques Costeau images or through Hollywoods lens. Instead of the mettlesomely stylized colors of Hollywood, we have the imagination and memories of a woman who spent her life on the Pacific Ocean and wants to ploughshare 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 movement she managed to achieve through years of experiments with high temperature glazes (Artist Statement 2004). 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 coloring effects would be impossible to replicate with under glazes. It also provides me with a new avenue to search the marriage of color and form unburdened by objective representation. (Artist Statement 2004).Indeed the conclave of the porcelain and high fire glazes has kept her work with the wet look and the delicacy common to many maritime animals. An interest twist in Potters 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 blackness mussels. (Potter 2006). The figure work is reminiscent of Michaelangelos 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-stalked (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 natures beauty can be brought inside via Potters work is very appealing to me. I find Carla Potters work to be inspiring and technically proficient, something that I believe is absent from many modern artists.Her delicate work in porcelain shows that she has the technica l abilities to carve lifelong humans and the assist to detail to make a mollusk shell that looks like I should be able to garbage down 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 CITEDArchie Bray al-Qaida, http//www.archiebray.org/residents/Potter/Potter.html, November 7, 2007.Biography, http//carlampotter.com/bio.htm, November 7, 2007.Carla Potters Artist Statement, http//www.carlampotter.com/statement.htm, November 7, 2007.Carla Potter 2006 collection, http//www.carlampotter.com/, November 7, 2007.