Air and Grace

摘要

Each huge, handbuilt ceramic piece in Toronto artist Susan Collett's Moire series is so thoroughly pierced that it is as much air as sculpture. In an astonishing collision of strength and fragility the pieces assume the shape of a vessel, but, riddled with holes, their ability to contain is challenged. Light spills through the openings, exaggerating the contrast of the bone-strong, multi-fired clay with all its fissures and fossil-like markings. The work has a distressed beauty not unlike the ancient Chinese shards that inspired it. Moire is the product of Collett's time at the Sanbao Art Institute in Jingdezhen, China, the world's porcelain capital for more than a thousand years, and thus a city steeped in ceramic history. Her three-month residency - bestowed for winning the prestigious Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramists at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery in Waterloo, Canada -introduced her to a Chinese landscape permeated with light and shadow. The region's hand-painted porcelain lamp-posts, multi-tiered tea farms, layered tile rooftops and leafy bamboo forests are all recorded in Collett's quick, graceful sketches, which became a pictorial diary of an experience she describes as a turning point in her career. 'The residency allowed me to leave behind my studio responsibilities with designers and tile commissions, and to just free-think and wander.' As much as she had enjoyed, and was successful at making, more functional pieces and commercial tile work - approaching each creation as fine art since her career began in the late eighties - she had felt the need to push herself to a new level.