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“Testimonial Urn II,” 18.75 in. (48 cm) in height, stoneware, with layered slips, salt fired to Cone 8–10, 2005.
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October 1, 2007
Uniting Layers of Content and Form
by Todd Turek | Read Comments (0)
In today’s Ceramic
Arts Daily, Paul McCoy explains how he unites content and form while
creating his complexly layered vessels.BackgroundInfluencesProcessesBody of workBACKGROUND
Paul McCoy, an artist and educator working
extensively within the vessel tradition, has developed imagery that is both
personal and expressive in an attempt to unite content and form. The ability of
the vessel form to connect with the past and present, the agrarian and the
industrial are among the ideas that McCoy strives to articulate in his work.
INFLUENCES
McCoy’s work also draws significantly from his
life in the environs of central Texas,
an area where the vegetation becomes brown and brittle, and the earth becomes a
cracked and parched carpet. McCoy effectively conveys his working environment
through densely configured slipped surfaces that are often washed with iron
stain prior to their exposure to the sodium vapor or the wood-fire fly ash of
the firing process.
PROCESSES McCoy uses a measured conservatism of form to
provide formal support for his extensive layering of surface imagery through
the use of paddling, internal and external altering, and the application of
deflocculated slips. Recessed marks and raised patterns reminiscent of scarred
trees, fault lines, tread imprints, and road configurations are often partially
buried under dozens of layers of deflocculated slips. His decision to resolve
the forms through wood- and salt-firing is McCoy’s attempt to achieve one
additional visual layer which supports and extends the underlying structures
without obliterating crucial content.
BODY OF WORKThe monolithic “Urn” series shares a geologic
and human content with his intimately scaled teabowls. Although the two types
of work address very different contextual histories of the vessel, both rely
extensively on levels of surface manipulation, slip layering and the marks of
the sodium vapor and wood-firing processes to charge the works with a dramatic
visual weight. FOR MORE INFORMATIONSee a term you weren’t quite sure of? Then visit
the Ceramic Arts Daily Glossary. ON WEDNESDAY
Read about Paul McCoy's use of deflocculated slip to build up and color the surfaces of his pieces.
Read more about these related topics:
Handbuilding Ceramic Sculpture Ceramics Decorating Ceramic Art Techniques Ceramic Artists
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