Photos and reporting by Robert Kokenyesi, Ceramic Artist, Beachfront Pottery, Godfrey, IL, 62035, USA. If you enjoyed this post, then like the post, and also like my Facebook page. Check out Beachfront Pottery posts on Instagram @beachfrontpottery. There is additional information about Beachfront Pottery on my web site.
The Venue
Sarah Knight was one of the participating artists in the Whittaker Foundation 2021 Artists-in-Residence Exhibition that took place from July 2 through August 7, 2021 in the Staenberg Gallery of Craft Alliance in St Louis, Missouri.
This is the entrance to Craft Alliance
The first photo is the entryway to the Staenberg Gallery. The second photo is the interior of the curated exhibit space. Sarah Knight’s pieces were arranged alongside the artwork of Douglas Dale.
The Call for Entry
For the last twelve years, Craft Alliance has welcomed emerging and mid-career artists who work with craft materials from all across the country to join our community of makers as our resident artists. Our Artists-In-Residence Program supports artists who want to develop their artistic investigations in a collaborative, community-based arts center. This residency program is dedicated to nurturing makers, fostering professional development, and allowing for time and space to create. We encourage artists to explore and expand on ideas and materials within their studio practice.
The Ceramic Art Pieces
This post is about the steel-containing ceramic pedestal pieces of Sarah Knight in this exhibition.
Sarah Knight uses the pronouns they/them. All narration in this post will use those pronouns. Their artist statement from their web site reads: “Is all matter intrinsically queer when it is in a state of transformation? This question is the foundation behind my making process and my decision to work with sculptural mixed-media. My sculptures work to reframe visible, historical, and contemporary queerness using material and process. Ceramic processes take a raw material and vitrify it using heat. Plaster dust and water sets into a solid. I see the role of transmutation in geological materials like this is closely aligned with the fluxing formation of self-identity. As a genderqueer artist, I take this process and incorporate fragments of stone, steel, and residue from previous sculptures to create conglomerates that question the role of artificial and natural, the made and the given, or the primordial and the evolved. I question how we “orient” ourselves in the landscape – we use landmarks like cairns, horizons, and poles. My sculptures resemble core samples, stacked-rock cairns, mountains, and caverns. Installed, they become landmarks of their own, objects of record, (dis)orientation, and memorial.”
Most of these pieces used some sort of steel base, or confinement structure to give sturdiness or even shape to these pieces. From my experience when firing small pieces of ceramics and stone with glaze, then the pieces tend to float during firing, and spread into unwanted directions or shapes.
Great looking pieces!!
Look up her other works at their web site.