meet beth elliott.

The core of my art practice has been working with clay for the past decade, but my creative endeavors encompass sculpture, painting, and installation art. My clay pieces are sculptural as well as illustrative, and they are driven instinctively by the connections that I see occurring as the work is created. I work from the forms arising during hand building and throwing, and alter these forms by disassembling and reassembling them, working with the pieces until the forms resonate with me internally. The addition or subtraction of illustrative layers, subtle textures, the application of handles or addition of artifacts arising from cutting apart my clay vessels gives each object an individual and identifiable sense of space, while reducing the vessel and its surface design to simple, modest, representational forms. 

Some of my clay vessels are basic shapes that I slip cast to creates a blank canvas for painting and scratching landscapes and conversations onto the clay.  Other materials and mixed media find their way into my sculptural work with or without the balance of clay. I work often in series, chasing a feeling until it can be resolved and reflected in the vessel and in nuances revealed by repetition in the series. It is this process of making that I am most connected to.

Oftentimes surface markings on the vessels can be attributed to a specific mood, but they also reflect the rough outline of a story or landscape that develops during the building of the forms. The markings are simple in form and free in their making, and are my private and public lexicon and response to the external world. 

A constant theme in the work I make is exploring relationships between form and function, and challenging well-known associations between familiar objects or vessels by using them to create new forms. Some of the permutations I create in my sculpture can echo biological systems or forms such as nests or pods, yet produce entirely novel systems that invite careful study.

some details.

small batch

Art and stoneware vessels are hand built, wheel thrown or slipcast, made in small batches as I work through themes and ideas I’m drawn to. 

one of a kind

Your piece is unique. While I revisit themes, shapes and markings, each artwork will never be repeated. 

vessels

Made from high fired stoneware. Food safe, handwash is best.

process.

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