Artist's Statement

There was a little wood cozied up to the ramshackle building we euphemistically called our five-stall garage. It was a native wood, dweller of old-world trees, it's residency established long before that of our old Victorian house which perched on the edge of its ancient maples, oaks, walnut and beech. The hardwood trunks were knarled, knobbed with bulges and hollows, hugely round and supported massively upraised arms, branching towards the sky above our three-story home. A narrow path wound its way through the wood to our neighbor's house a half mile away.
In the serenity of this small forest, there were enclaves of dappled sunlight, small skylights, filtering through the cloaking green leaves above; there were small lavender gems of woodland violets and there were clumps of white lily of the valley hidden in silken repose.
This then was the dreamland of my youth where I often sat in the nirvana which is nature and built the fairytales of my future.

Art is the woodland forest.

Reveries are the bounty of the quiescent soul, yet best sometimes to be left behind, not to be abandoned entirely, but placed gently aside in lieu of companionship, song and laughter. In such few words do I describe my Mother. Her songs were sweet music to the universe, her laughter the angelus bells ringing in the morning sunrise and the magic of her Irish stories touched each piece of antique furniture, each piece of porcelain plateware, each everyday fabric and matter with such personality that all of our material items pulsated with life, emotion and a spirit all their own.

Art is the song to the Universe, the laughter of the angelus bells, the Irish story giving it an impish personality.

My pottery is designed to bring you the discovery of woodland violets, cause you to see the little elves hidden under their lily of the valley bonnets, share the dappled but shaded sunlight of a summer afternoon, fill you with laughter and the sweet harmonic song of the universe, touch your emotions and trigger your passion for the beauty of life.

But more than creating, art is sharing the skills and techniques involved in producing pottery. As Hemmingway would tell us, man is not an island unto himself. And for all the talents, skills and just plain diligent work it has taken to find the balance between the potter's wheel and the clay to form a harmonious vessel, then blend the metallic oxides in a proportion which will obtain a kaleidoscope of colorful glazes, and learn to eye the kilnfire's licking flames which will vitrify both clay and glaze into a vessel as from the womb to maturity, so must this knowledge be shared. Taught as it were, to students who will give future generations the inheritance of elegance, strength, utility, traditional art laced with innovation, the familiarity of cups, plates, serving bowls combined with the creative interface of artistic intuition, and themes of color, texture and form drawn from visual observation of our world which flow into creative compositions of new art milieus. These are the future potters who will breathe such distinctive character into their work that it transcends the medium, responding, interacting and enabling a spiritual bond between the holder of the pottery piece and art itself.

This, then, is my artist's statement.
To create.
To share the passion of art.
To teach the necessary skills to those who will craft the canvas of life with spirit by means of pottery. A matrix morphing ever more ethereal and aspiring to Olympian heights in the evolution of creativity.

© 2009 Chaeli Sullivan