4o. This work celebrates the power and beauty of a rustic kind of pottery, the kind used in villages over centuries for the most essential and commonplace of tasks. The purity and stone-like quality of Obvara, whose effect covers the surface of each piece, is both permeable, inviting, and naturalistically imposing. In a sense, the practice and result of each piece feels like returning to a more primordial, comforting simplicity. You can find out more about the Obvara practice here.

Motherhood and conviviality are central here: the ‘communal’ nature of the jugs, vases and bowl offer me warm visions of aunts and grandmothers of countless villages sharing their love and time as they go about doing their work, deeply tied into their communities. Yet, at the same time, these pieces carry a haunting and very modern nature, one of a moving body trapped in stone. Their complex surfaces read the traumatic ways in which they were birthed, emerging from fire. Each piece has a strong, imposing personality whose demands cannot be ignored. The clay remains caught in a relatively vulnerable, un-vitrified state. The bottom of each piece may choose to leave a mark of where it has been, if not handled with care. The surface continues to hold the subtle smell of a fermentation burning and evaporating off of it. The Obvara ‘skin’, which holds water back from over-saturating the clay and slowly disintegrating it, is itself not immune to being scratched off with enough force. For me, the Obvara process brings each piece to life. It takes the organic nature of flour and yeast and etches it as identity and agency onto the otherwise barren surface of the clay—now, each piece has its own intention, interacting with its environment on its own terms and with its particular dignity.

In recent years, I have sought a more immediate role in the entire ceramic-making process, an attempt at gaining more creative freedom by side-stepping a reliance on expensive electronic equipment. This has involved building a backyard studio that allows me to hand-build pieces and experiment with alternatives to commercially-produced glazing, such as obvara and soda firing. Most significantly, it has led me to build an in-the-ground brick kiln, in which I have been firing pieces by burning hardwood charcoal. Firing at lower temperatures, with a material that has so much personality and physical presence, has brought a lot of welcomed complication and depth to my process. The attention to detail required when firing in this way, and the closeness one feels to the clay as it vitrifies, engulfed in fire, has been very rewarding for me.

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