Artist of the Day

Katie MacDowell, ceramic artist.

Her work is just so beautifully crafted. The medium used -- porcelain -- definitely adds to the content of the work: beauty, fragility, and phantasmality. My favorite pieces have to be where light is involved, hidden inside the works to give it a certain glow, which adds to the ghostly imagery of our collision with nature.

From her statement: "In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment.  These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops.  They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones.  In some pieces aspects of the human figure stand-in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world.  In others, animals take on anthropomorphic qualities when they are given safety equipment to attempt to protect them from man-made environmental threats.  In each case the union between man and nature is shown to be one of friction and discomfort with the disturbing implication that we too are vulnerable to being victimized by our destructive practices."

Simply wonderful. I encourage you to visit her website and view her work.