vessels

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Art

Miniature Faces Add Three-Dimensional Personality to Ceramic Vessels and Tableware

Rami Kim began making visual artwork as a stop-motion animator, crafting small head sculptures for her films’ puppets. These objects became the inspiration for her works in clay, eventually morphing into the face pots and mugs she creates today. Kim’s tiny three-dimensional faces range from monochrome noses and mouths to painted visages complete with lipstick-adorned mouths and perfectly perched eyebrows. Eventually the Los Angeles-based artist would like to close the production loop, letting her new cast of ceramic characters inspire a new set of short animated films. You can follow the evolution of her anthropomorphic dishes, mugs, pour over vessels on her website and Instagram.

Art Craft

Claws and Teeth Emerge From Otherworldly Ceramic Vessels by Gregory Knopp

While many designers focus on enhancing the cuteness of small air plants, ceramic artist Gregory Knopp highlights the otherworldly qualities of these popular plants. His hand-built clay vessels feature gaping mouth-like holes surrounded by curling claws or winding appendages that draw attention to the spindly air plants. Knopp, who works under the name Tooth and Snail, explains that he begins each piece with a concept sketch and then develops the work instinctively with clay in hand. “This is such an intuitive and malleable medium, it allows for images and ideas that might not be conscious to come through and take shape.”

Knopp immigrated as a child with his family from Russia to Brooklyn, where he currently lives and works. The artist shares with Colossal that he has always been fascinated by deep sea life forms. As a high schooler he volunteered at the Coney Island Aquarium, where he was drawn to corals and octupuses over the more popular sea otters and dolphins. Knopp’s interest in science continues today, and the artist finds inspiration in readings on anatomy and evolutionary biology. “Living forms have much order and purpose in their constitutions, but are at the same time ludicrous and whimsical,” he explains. “I try to capture some of that with these sculptures.”

Knopp’s unusual sculptural ceramics, including dramatic interpretations of cacti, are available in the Tooth and Snail online store and at pop-up markets around Brooklyn. The artist also shares updates on Instagram.

Animation Craft Design

Graphically Designed Ceramic Vessels Form Zoetrope Animations When Spun on a Pottery Wheel

After years of work as a ceramic artist, Kenny Sing of Turn Studio has created a series of shallow vessels which double as zoetrope animations when spun. His project, Trepō, transfers digital patterns onto the one-of-a-kind curves of his ceramic platters. The patterns are then either precisely cut from or glazed onto their surface. These elements act as static designs until they are activated by a pottery wheel. As the wheel turns, the patterns come to life: cubes, triangles, and rectangles appear to tumble into the center of the vessel. You can view the process for creating one of the ceramic vessels in the video below, and view more works on Turn Studio’s website, Instagram, and Vimeo. (via Colossal Submissions)

Art

Ceramist Anna Whitehouse Created 100 Unique Clay Vessels in 100 Days

U.K.-based ceramic artist Anna Whitehouse set a goal on January 1, 2018 to create a new bottle each day for 100 days. By limiting herself to a single form, Whitehouse was able to stretch her  creativity to formulate new designs previously unexplored in her practice. Each white ceramic bottle was uniformly shaped, but the designs she created on the surface differed each day. Some bottles were punctured with tiny repetitive holes, while others were covered in leaf-like applications or floral motifs.

“I tried pressing and scraping any tool I could get my hands on into the clay,” Whitehouse explains. “From my standard clay tools to pen lids, tweezers, scissors, and even a string of beads! I also started making my own tools from bits of broken pen, wire, and aluminum to create particular marks.”​

​The artist compares the 100-day-long exercise to journaling or filling a sketchbook, as each new object was like a brand new sketch that could be learned from for the next day. “I’ve kept the work unglazed, like white pages from a sketchbook, highlighting the mark making through the contrast created by shadows.”

After the completion of her project Whitehouse created a “clay calendar” which you can visit on her website. The interactive portfolio outlines each bottle she made from January 1 to April 10, 2018, and includes her unique titles which are based on something that happened during the day they were made. You can see further iterations of her bottles and clay creations on her Instagram. (via Colossal Submissions)

Art

Fresco-Inspired Porcelain Bowls Formed From Balloons by Guy Van Leemput

Ceramicist and mathematician Guy Van Leemput forms textured bowls by drafting interlocking lines, abnormally shaped circles, and other designs on the surface of balloons. The artist begins by adding a porcelain stamp to the bottom of his rubber mold and then working his way in a circular motion upward. Although his designs are geometrically inspired, he creates each piece based on intuition rather than a pre-determined template. When finished, the pots are so translucent they appear as if they were formed from paper. This aesthetic, both in the works’ color and technique, was inspired by ancient Italian fresco paintings, and has been a part of his practice since 2014.

Currently Van Leemput’s work is included in the Porcelain Biennale at the Albrechtsburg Castle in Meissen, Germany, the city where European porcelain was first composed. The exhibition opened earlier this month and runs through November 4, 2018. You can take a look inside the artist’s studio and handbuilt kiln in a video made for the Dutch ceramics magazine de kleine K below. (via Art is a Way)

Art

Miniature Workshops Constructed Inside Ceramic Vessels by Jedediah Voltz

Miniature-builder and ceramicist Jedediah Corwyn Voltz constructs tiny homes, studios, and workshops perched within or around domestic objects. Previously we’ve covered his mini treehouses—impressive structures that scale succulents and other common houseplants with the support of petite scaffolding. Recently the artist has combined two of his preferred mediums, building small-scale interior scenes in the cross-section of his handmade ceramic vessels.

The multi-piece sculptures feature workbenches, complex machinery, crystals, and telescopes which peer from the top of the converted pots. These miniature workshops will be exhibited in the group show Bad Ass Miniatures: … Causing a Little Trouble at D. Thomas Fine Miniatures in Yonkers, New York from May 5 through July 22. You can view more of the Los Angeles-based artist’s ceramic works and tiny houseplant homes on his Instagram and Big Cartel.