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New Work from Natasha Alphonse
January 3 - February 1, 2021

NATASHA: "The MUD series explores the honesty of clay as a material and how we, as makers, manipulate it to create new objects within space.
Clay as a raw material can be experienced smooth, sandy, dry, cracked, deeply earthy or chalky white. This series embraces all of these elements.
I began with 3 large jars, thrown and coil built on the wheel.
When making a large pot, you become much more aware of the lines in space that it occupies and how that changes how you see and ultimately feel about that object.
I wanted to create these jars to sit with a feeling of stillness, steadiness and an abundance of space within.
The openings of the vessels are wide with a gentle shoulder and firm base.
They are not perfect; they show the hand and gesture of how soft the glaze was at one point to pour and stretch over the skin of the pot.
The series expands into bowls and cups that were thrown loosely, with lots of movement in the shape, and expressive cracks of the splashed on glaze.
The smaller bottles and vessels are explorations of how each shape creates a different presence of a pot.
It changes so much with the alteration of a foot, shoulder and neck opening.
The series is then fired atmospherically, in a kiln fueled by wood, and then vapor glazed with soda ash.
Surrendering control and creating a circumstance where the atmosphere plays its own part to manipulate the surface of each pot."

Natasha Alphonse is a Seattle based artist, making functional ceramics that are minimal and earthy. She is a First Nations artist, from the Dene tribe, and comes from Northern Saskatchewan.

Her work pulls from her visual background of the landscape and childhood memories of mossy rocks, snowy landscapes, water and the quiet wilderness.

The work she creates is pulled forward by the curiosity of experimenting with different processes that can be achieved in ceramics, working with atmospheric firings and materials.

Working to always find visual calming balance in her forms, her background in drawing lends itself to see these pots as lines in space and how that might affect the presence of a pot. Striving to always find harmony in the honesty of the raw material itself and how it exists in space.