MFA Thesis Exhibit
Margeaux Claude
Ceramic Art
Artist Statement
Design generates utility, self-expression, and joy, reflecting both culture and the individual creator. I contemplate metaphors of permanence and change through the manipulation of method and materials, namely clay, scagliola, plaster, glass, glaze, wood, and cardboard. Research and visual allegory are combined to reveal arrangements and forms that are a culmination of moving through the past and the present. Resonance and reverberated knowing weave together to create the context for our being in the present.
My work is shaped by the discarded tools of 20th Century American ceramic factories. I embrace historical practices of ceramic industrial design, including turning, sledging, and jigging plaster. Conceptually my work is generated through archival research and expressions of intuition - tethered by a frozen moment in time. The outcome are objects that are more self reflective, part fantasy, part reality. There is a dialogue between “old” and “new”. This dialogue is intended to be rich, and to acknowledge that any one style or trend, in design or art always does rely on what came before it - because it is imbedded in our culture in a way we can not parse out. This reality relates to the visual arrangements that occur in my practice. Works or arrangements toggle between the energy of “starting” and the refinement of “finished”. I am charged by the range of tactile energy in a freshly developed object, and the clarity and refinement of what is “complete”.
Materials chosen carry the history, and alchemy, of pressure and time. I work to extrapolate from material a visceral sensation, like the experience of beach sand, sliced cold butter, or polished bone china — that has the cool softness of marble or the patina of wet skin.
My work is shaped by the discarded tools of 20th Century American ceramic factories. I embrace historical practices of ceramic industrial design, including turning, sledging, and jigging plaster. Conceptually my work is generated through archival research and expressions of intuition - tethered by a frozen moment in time. The outcome are objects that are more self reflective, part fantasy, part reality. There is a dialogue between “old” and “new”. This dialogue is intended to be rich, and to acknowledge that any one style or trend, in design or art always does rely on what came before it - because it is imbedded in our culture in a way we can not parse out. This reality relates to the visual arrangements that occur in my practice. Works or arrangements toggle between the energy of “starting” and the refinement of “finished”. I am charged by the range of tactile energy in a freshly developed object, and the clarity and refinement of what is “complete”.
Materials chosen carry the history, and alchemy, of pressure and time. I work to extrapolate from material a visceral sensation, like the experience of beach sand, sliced cold butter, or polished bone china — that has the cool softness of marble or the patina of wet skin.
