Space

MAX BAEZ

ARTIST STATEMENT

Throughout my rather short career in ceramics I have been fascinated with two main concepts: the first, simple, yet elegant functional forms such as bowls and cups that are both useful and interesting to handle and admire, the second is large pots, still functional in form, but so large that they become more of a sculpture than a practical piece of work. My piece, Space is the accumulation of my experiences making these large forms. Early on I was, and still am inspired by the large Korean Onggi pots, huge storage containers all hand crafted, but still elegant in their shape.This is what led me to begin attempting to create large pieces that still maintained a fluid shape despite their size. I explored several different techniques, sometimes trying to throw as much clay as I could, and other times constructing the piece with large coils of clay to form the walls. Eventually I settled on the method I use today, throwing large sections of the pot before attaching them together and shaping to create the final shape. Early on in the planning of Space I discovered the work of Hannie Goldgewicht who makes pots with clay bases and then continues the wall of the piece with woven pine needles. This, along with my method of piecing together large sections of clay to form one pot inspired me to explore the idea of replacing sections of the pot with different materials. I am very fortunate to have a stone carving and metal working studio directly next to the pottery studio at my school which gave me a large supply of scrap metal and wire as the materials for the replaced section in the piece. Space is now the first piece in what will be a series of sculptural pots all with different types of materials replacing some of their sections.