ABBY RICHARDSON

My ceramic work continues many themes of my architectural practice but in a different scale and medium. The work engages form, space, texture, material, and color at a size that can fit on a table top. The fragmented geometric forms hover between architectural structure and collapse. 

The process is highly intuitive, serial, and repetitive. Each form is built by folding clay slabs. I utilize a technique called, “rapid model making” that I would often practice with beginning design students where the brain rests and then hands do the informing/talking. In this way, the pieces make themselves into existence. 

The individual triangle is a configuration of negative and positive space that is then placed in a grouping where the assembled units play off each other into a cohesive spatial arrangement taking on new angles and subverting a singular viewpoint. 

The texture and color, which I see as essential to the work, is the product of forces not totally within my control. The pieces are wood fired, sometimes in a kiln and sometimes in a pit or dumpster. These firings are done in a communal setting with friends and fellow artists. In this way the final affect of the piece is shaped not only by my hand, but also by the local clay and organic compounds it contains as they interact with fire fed by myself and others laughing and talking long into the New Mexico night.