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Niles Wallace
Primary Medium Clay
Description of Work Sculptural and functional stoneware and porcelain
Chapter Southwest
Website https://nileswallace.weebly.com/
Artist Statement
As an undergraduate Art Education major I discovered the ceramics studio and became completely enamored with clay, the potter’s wheel and vessels. My early formal training through graduate school was as a ceramicist. During graduate school I began to work on more sculptural forms, and eventually I quit the container altogether as perhaps a less serious concern. I successfully exhibited my work on a national level. After I began teaching I pursued painting, and mixed media sculpture. For about fifteen years I did not touch clay at all and taught foundation classes and sculpture. About five years ago I started rediscovering clay media and the joy of making vessels. In returning to the media and the forms that initially attracted me I feel that I have approached them as a sculptor and a painter but with a potters awareness of materials and skill.
My current work consists of wide stoneware bowls that acknowledge the history of vessels and painting on the decorative form while being tied to contemporary art and social concerns.
The bowls are relatively large by utilitarian standards, approximately 22” in diam. They are shallow pedestal bowls that are intended to hang on the wall but also work well visually on the table. They are glazed and fired to C/9 and then overglazed, often multiple times, with majolica glaze to C/04. The stoneware glazes provide warmth, texture, and depth while the majolica lends brightness and intensity of color. Together they allow a high degree of control of imagery and specificity of color, as well as a haptic experience that is not as readily available from paint on canvas. I often fuse three-dimensional ceramic objects in the glaze such as small vessels, abstracted flowers, and molded sculptures such as cherubs. I think of these as collage elements.
The glaze painting of flowers and floral pattern naturally address issues of death and renewal. These are rather intimate frozen moments. I embrace the ideas of beauty but try to tie them to a subtle sense of violence. The shallow concave arc of the bowl allows the stoneware glazes to flow as they melt colliding with each other and pooling. Hopefully this aggressively animates the flowers and background by an unseen force. I am exploring this quiet sense of violence on the images of fertility and hope. I acknowledge an interest in the work of painters Jenny Saville and Donald Sultan, and photographer Ori Gersht.
If I were fortunate enough to be awarded this grant, I would hope to use the funds to pursue wider exhibition possibilities through travel and to improve my studio facilities to enable me to increase the physical size of the bowls.
As an undergraduate Art Education major I discovered the ceramics studio and became completely enamored with clay, the potter’s wheel and vessels. My early formal training through graduate school was as a ceramicist. During graduate school I began to work on more sculptural forms, and eventually I quit the container altogether as perhaps a less serious concern. I successfully exhibited my work on a national level. After I began teaching I pursued painting, and mixed media sculpture. For about fifteen years I did not touch clay at all and taught foundation classes and sculpture. About five years ago I started rediscovering clay media and the joy of making vessels. In returning to the media and the forms that initially attracted me I feel that I have approached them as a sculptor and a painter but with a potters awareness of materials and skill.
My current work consists of wide stoneware bowls that acknowledge the history of vessels and painting on the decorative form while being tied to contemporary art and social concerns.
The bowls are relatively large by utilitarian standards, approximately 22” in diam. They are shallow pedestal bowls that are intended to hang on the wall but also work well visually on the table. They are glazed and fired to C/9 and then overglazed, often multiple times, with majolica glaze to C/04. The stoneware glazes provide warmth, texture, and depth while the majolica lends brightness and intensity of color. Together they allow a high degree of control of imagery and specificity of color, as well as a haptic experience that is not as readily available from paint on canvas. I often fuse three-dimensional ceramic objects in the glaze such as small vessels, abstracted flowers, and molded sculptures such as cherubs. I think of these as collage elements.
The glaze painting of flowers and floral pattern naturally address issues of death and renewal. These are rather intimate frozen moments. I embrace the ideas of beauty but try to tie them to a subtle sense of violence. The shallow concave arc of the bowl allows the stoneware glazes to flow as they melt colliding with each other and pooling. Hopefully this aggressively animates the flowers and background by an unseen force. I am exploring this quiet sense of violence on the images of fertility and hope. I acknowledge an interest in the work of painters Jenny Saville and Donald Sultan, and photographer Ori Gersht.
If I were fortunate enough to be awarded this grant, I would hope to use the funds to pursue wider exhibition possibilities through travel and to improve my studio facilities to enable me to increase the physical size of the bowls.
Artist Details
- Craft Teaching
- Teach at The University of Memphis
- Retail Artworks
- Commissioned Artworks
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