Teapot Tuesday - Emergence Teapot
Have you ever seen an old building where the walls are made of brick. Maybe somebody plastered over the brick a few years ago but now that plaster has crumbled and fallen off the wall in spots. The brick is revield again and we also see something else, a glimpse into the past life of the building. Maybe it's an advertisement for some product, maybe it's the name of the store that was originally there. Maybe it's some graffiti message.
I love seeing these walls. It's like an archeological dig without the dirt. Not that I am opposed to getting dirty or muddy. I am a potter after all. Anyway, I love how we get a glimpse into the past. How it peeks out at us from under it's blanket of old plaster and paint. I love how only part of the message is exposed leaving our minds eye to fill in the rest.
That's the motivation behind a series of pots I made. I named it the Emergence series because the message was emerging.
On this teapot we see the pretty white porcelain with a few pastel flowers painted around the top. But the porcelain and flowers are chipping away to revile a message. What we see is part of a word the word is surrounded by the red circle with a line through it that we universally know to mean "No." The letters that we see of the word are s-e-x-i-s.
When I would take this teapot to shows it was always funny to hear people talk about it. Sometimes they would read "sexisim" or "sexist" as I intended, sometimes they would just stop reading at the letter x. Some people just didn't get it at all while others did and enjoyed the message. I sometimes wondered if an art festival was the wrong place to try to sell a piece of art pottery, it's just not what people seem to be ready to see in a pottery booth. I still have this teapot, maybe one day I'll enter it into a teapot show or something and see what people think about it in that light.
Check out the gallery page - Future Relics Gallery by Lori Buff
I love seeing these walls. It's like an archeological dig without the dirt. Not that I am opposed to getting dirty or muddy. I am a potter after all. Anyway, I love how we get a glimpse into the past. How it peeks out at us from under it's blanket of old plaster and paint. I love how only part of the message is exposed leaving our minds eye to fill in the rest.
That's the motivation behind a series of pots I made. I named it the Emergence series because the message was emerging.
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| No Sexis... Teapot |
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| No Sexis...Teapot Detail |
When I would take this teapot to shows it was always funny to hear people talk about it. Sometimes they would read "sexisim" or "sexist" as I intended, sometimes they would just stop reading at the letter x. Some people just didn't get it at all while others did and enjoyed the message. I sometimes wondered if an art festival was the wrong place to try to sell a piece of art pottery, it's just not what people seem to be ready to see in a pottery booth. I still have this teapot, maybe one day I'll enter it into a teapot show or something and see what people think about it in that light.
Check out the gallery page - Future Relics Gallery by Lori Buff
I think you should explore that process some more... perhaps on vases, tumblers, or mugs.
ReplyDeleteSome years ago in NH there was a glass artist who started doing sculptures of female sex organs. There was complaint by a fair goer and it was brought to his attention. He then enclosed that area of his booth with yellow caution tape... I thought it was brilliant.
Thanks Michèle, I did make a number of different pieces with this theme, I still have most of them. It takes a lot of time to create the brick and the graffiti so the pieces aren't as accessible as my other work.
DeleteI like the idea of a partially hidden sign or perhaps some graffiti that's partly revealed on a wall, architecture and architectural elements have always appealed to me, if I saw this teapot without an explanation I have to admit I might be confused.
ReplyDeleteYes Linda, I think most people needed it to be explained, that's probibly why I still own it.
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