Civi Group Option Value ID: 
576

Artist: Carol Koffel (authored by ckoffel)

Mediums: 
Artist Display Name: 
Carol Koffel
Artist Statement: 

 I make metaphoric and utilitarian vessels in clay to explore beauty as a human nutrient. The vessels arrayed in delicate scaffolding, secured to a wall, nested on industrial felt or held in someone’s hand, bridge theoretical notions of art, craft and design. I offer these vessels in precarious arrangements, intimate settings and community spaces to create sensate and spatial fields for embodied viewing. Ultimately hoping to intonate a range of psychic relations.

My work investigates verbal and non-verbal differences I observe as resonant or dissonant interactions between individuals or in community. I aim to initiate a kinesthetic retuning of mind and body alignment through activation of space and the viewer’s body.

As a crafts person, my hands guide an intuitive awareness of interactions into the material realm. The utilitarian or metaphoric vessels lend these observations physical form. For example, Geo Political Array, arrangement of porcelain catchments teetering on masonry line structurally suggests, by turns, safety or peril.  Orogenic Spires, ceramic edifices that at once suggest beauty and fragility metaphorically activate a sense of land formation and wind currents to heighten awareness of invisible forces. Objects and spatial installations made to invite intimacy.

I choose clay for its properties of flexibility, forgiveness and my inability to control outcomes. I use porcelain, primal clay that is mined where it was formed and sedimentary clay that has been transported to new places by water. 

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