Peyton Pickenpaugh
I work in ceramics because I love texture. I often treat the clay as if it were a 2-dimensional piece of fabric. Most of my art begins by rolling the clay on a slab roller, cutting out patterns and creating impressions with natural objects or lace. While the finished product is a 3-dimensional piece, it almost always starts with a flat slab of clay.
Fashion, nature and my neighborhood are my biggest inspirations. I love the way fashion designers can transform a woman into a thoughtful work of art by draping fabric and adding embellishments. Also, my daily life in the Mission District of San Francisco, especially Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), have inspired me to create the base of my most recent sculptures as a skeletal face. However, I believe the true artistry in these pieces comes from what adorns each face, the flowers, hairstyles, facepaint, etc. In making these faces I’ve thought a lot about self-adornment. How do we choose to decorate and enhance ourselves in both life and death?
Each of my pieces are hand-made, original works of art.
