TO DRESS A PTARMIGAN

My works begin on the potter's wheel as functional vessels. I alter them by cutting out the bottom, perforating them, coiling, pinching, stamping, and scraping them, resulting in vessel forms that are non-functional and non-applicable to ordinary uses. Between eight to twenty-three inches tall, their surfaces contain many layers of engobe, slip, glaze, and lusters. Then I fill the vessels with other richly layered ceramic forms. Commonly I use white or blue crackled glazes, through which are seen colors echoing the Arctic landscape in northern Sweden, where she grew up. The sculptures simultaneously evoke biomorphic forms and crafted functional objects and reference the terrestrial, subterranean, and celestial.

IRJA BODÉN

IRJA BODÉN