Laura Kukkee
Artist Statement

My work in ceramics is an expression of a current and personal visual language created by a synthesis of the formal traditions of ceramics and the decorative arts. I gather and rethink the rules, toss out some, reduce and simplify some, amplify and exaggerate others. My work is vessel-oriented, and focuses on the charged spaces occupied by ceramic objects. Part of the power of a vessel is that it presents to us an expectation of interaction; it tells something about its physicality and how we are to interpret it in those terms. The spaces inside, above, beside and between vessels are spaces which are charged with this physical energy. In my work, decorative motifs and patterns are expressed three-dimensionally and sprout out into these spaces, lifting pattern and images off of the vessels and into these charged, expectant spaces. Handles change into drawings, drawings change into handles, these forms repeat and multiply, pushing up and pushing out. I surround and encrust the vessel, loving it up, exaggerate its beauty and its importance by adding more and more, layer upon layer. By activating the vessel in this way, the work remixes and reinterprets the formal language of ceramics through exaggeration, abstraction and the rhythm of repetition.

Laura Kukkee 2009