Fiume Veloce

Ceramic


2011

Maria Simon

All of my work fundamentally draws upon landscape...even the more abstract pieces. It's an exploration of form, energy, light and shadow, rhythm and movement, in the natural world and within the landscape of the human psyche and spirit. I am learning to navigate the small stuff-- the intimate details of what captures my attention, and to see how it really behaves through deep observation.

The work is meant not so much to repeat nature, but to evoke a sense of place...it's luminosity, velocity or stillness, peace or tumult... the "voice" of the place. Images are often about details or ephemera within the landscape that contain a whole universe--- the way water moves around a rock; the way a breath of air moves across a field of grass; the way small stones are trapped in a small crevice of rock face… It's clear to me that what I choose to notice in the outer world is a direct reflection of what is happening inside. The boundaries dissolve.

The images are meditations which begin with a hike, a snapshot, a line of poetry, a dream, a word…a song. My ultimate intention is to invite the viewer to bring his or her own story to the work, to resonate with something familiar, or forgotten, or longed-for. All pieces are built with terra cotta or porcelain. Each begins with a thick slab, to which coils of clay have been added. At the leather-hard stage it is hand-carved on an easel, using spot lighting, so that I am working with light and shadow from the get-go. The piece is burnished, then allowed to dry slowly. After the initial bisque firing, it is painted with successive thin layers of stained terra sigillata (a finely milled, decanted, and stained clay slip), burnished, and fired. The finished piece is rubbed with a fine layer of cold wax, polished, and set into a recessed “shadow-box” hardwood frame.