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 surface treatments. I sometimes fill the vessels with other richly layered ceramic forms. I commonly use white or blue crackled glazes, through which colors echo the Arctic landscape in northern Sweden, where I grew up. The sculptures simultaneously evoke biomorphic forms and crafted functional objects and reference the terrestrial, subterranean, and celestial.