(Faculty Submission)
Medium: Pottery
Artist Statement:
My work in pottery lets fire and flow (of clay, glaze, water) do the talking. This piece (which belongs in almost every thematic category of this competition) was wheel-thrown and fired while I was advising a group of 10 IQP students in D-term when COVID-19 was raging all over the world. Each week, we talked about our ways of coping – some students experimented with sourdough, others wrote music and I made pots in my home studio. This piece is a vessel of my imagination representing our creative bubbling (blue glaze over rim) overflowing the dark times (black gloss glaze) with kindness, care for each other and embrace of home. I made a cup to give to each student when we meet again on campus. Drinking tea from a cup of kindness will bring back a memory of how we helped each other get through the worst times in the epidemic and emerged on the other side with an excellent piece of work (3 creative and polished IQP reports), a sense of global community unbroken (students stayed in close touch with each other and their project partners in Russia) and a thirst for human connection quenched.