Oyster Billow

Sienna Hartvigson

ARTIST STATEMENT

The central idea of my concentration consists of my involvement of clay coils and my inspiration drawn from the ocean. Using clay as my primary medium, I used it’s ability to form coils in order to recreate and dramatize the structure, movement, repetition, and shape of clams and oysters that are found in natures’ waters, as well as to represent the beauty of the naturally created shells. I found inspiration for my piece from my personal love and appreciation of the world’s oceans and the unbelievable things living in them. I took the idea of the repeating coils and lines on oyster and clam shells and created an abstract, yet some­what representational design that resembled these shells. I was inspired to explore the medium of clay in the form of coils by the teaching of Silvia Wiedmann, my art teacher at Cathedral Catholic High School. She introduced this technique to me and it sparked my creative thoughts of recreating the oyster shells. My piece is composed of mostly all clay coils­ I created two halves that each have three rounded humps that were made by repeating clay coils that held the rounded shape while building up into almost spherical shapes. As I progressed in my body of work, I wanted to focus on the repetition and movement of the coils and I did this by creating coils that gradually got bigger and then smaller in size. Finally, I attached the two halves together at the base, just as an oyster or clam shell would, and place “pearls” on the top to enhance the theme. I used a metallic gray, high fire glaze on the body of my piece in order to make the many coils “melt together” for them to look like they were one, continuous shape. I also thought the color was a modern and bold interpretation of the grayish color of oysters and clams. I chose to paint the pearls a classic white color to create contrast, as well as highlight and differentiate them from the coils more obviously.