Karen Baxter Visual Arts BA: June 2010

About My Work

Hello and welcome,
Thank you for taking the time to have a look at my work.

It started with the female form, its intimate folds and references to landscape. It is also about exploring the materiality of the various clay bodies and some effects of mixing them.

Each piece of stretched clay is unique in it's weight and composition, and a record of the process, bearing marks and scars. The finished item is a dialogue between the substance and the artist; a frozen moment of combat and compromise between will and material.

The pieces are deliberatly ambiguous and made to appear organic, they are what each person sees them to be in the same way everything we focus on is a reflection of ourselves.

Stacking the pieces creates cave-like spaces and explores issues of form and space. When stacked they create an aura of fagility and vulnerability while the ceramic itself is quite robust.

Saturday, 5 June 2010

Close-up images of Degree Show

Two drawings, hanging in the down-stairs gallery

Up-stairs: the view as you walk towards my work,
4 stacks of mixed ceramics.

The work does not photograph very well and you
don't get the sense of their fragility or how nervous
they can make you feel.

They are balanced to look as if they may toppel,
playing with the sense of strength and vulnerability.