Photo Credit: Siena DeBolt
Artist Statement
My pottery derives its forms from historical Scandinavian folk arts and the story of a 150-year-old family farm. Born into a family of Norwegian farmers who immigrated to the United States in 1856, I echo the tradition of my great-grandparents’ handmade craft objects, which were decorated with fantastical floral motifs, through researching Norwegian ale bowls. In probing Viking-era burial sites like the Oseberg Mound, I rediscovered my ancestry separately from family stories steeped in dogma. By sculpting finials of mythological creatures, I touch upon how ancestral homelands are both myth and reality for American descendants of immigrants. Just as I grew up with Viking lore, I counter the myths in my upbringing by embracing my descendants as farmers. As my hands feel, pinch, turn, lift, and heft the soft clay, I contemplate my ancestors toiling with their hands in the earth, in wood, and in stone. My forms echo the rich practice of working the land, manifesting as soft-formed clay walls reminiscent of rolling hills. Vertical carved ridges, akin to plow-scraped fields, meet with gentle wave-like rims. Working with a kick wheel becomes for me a meditative experience. As my feet propel the vessel, I capture the rhythmic movement juxtaposed by sharp vertical textures. With this artistic labor, I take part in my family’s legacy of hard work and storytelling, uniting the farmer and the academic at a common table and evoking a timeless truth: the glorious can be found in the mundane, and the divine in the common.
Artwork Statement - Ale Bowls
“Ale Bowls” is a series of ceramic bowls that are thrown and altered on the potter’s wheel with hand-built sculptural finials added on either side. The forms are inspired by historical, wooden craft objects called Ale Bowls from Norway. These bowls were hand-carved and used as communal drinking vessels during festival celebrations in rural Norwegian farming communities. In recreating these vessels in clay, I celebrate the qualities of touch found in shared ritual experiences, in the plasticity of the material, and in a transforming fire. After the surface decoration is applied, the piece is fired in a high-atmospheric wood and/or soda kilns. As the physical flame billows, rolls, and swells, it scars the work. As my hand runs across the pockmarked surface, I think of the rural farmers as they moved from one house to another, passing each ale bowl from hand to hand, celebrating each stage of a hard-worn life.