Dotsonpots

How to create two dimensional imagery with three dimensional ceramic vases

As a furniture and lighting designer and as a ceramic artist I often use 2-d mediums to describe 3-d objects. With Dotsonpots I wanted to achieve the opposite.

I communicate my product designs through drawings. I use drawing techniques to make them look realistic so the design and development team can imagine what I’m proposing and the builder can understand what I would like built. When I photograph my ceramic work I manipulate the light sources to make highlights and shadows to help my audience understand the objects from the picture.

The Dotsonpots project is an experiment to create 2-d imagery made out of 3-d objects. The project consists of 12 vessels of various forms, each covered in a unique dot pattern. These patterns confuse the outlines and volumes of individual forms as well as the spatial relationship among them.

I threw the vessels on a potter’s wheel. Rather than planning a list of forms ahead of time I decided on the forms one by one as I progressed. The second piece is a response to the first, the third piece a response to the first two, and so on. After bisque firing, I applied dots with wax which would resist glaze, deciding the dot patterns and the glaze as I go, and then fired to 2200F degree in an electric kiln.

2015
Ceramic
The project was exhibited at Choplet Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.