Artist/Award/Artist StatementRebecca C. Harvey (1996, Visual Arts)
I am interested the possibilities of simultaneous simplicity and complexity, in words and objects that have both simple and multiple meanings. Is "duck" the action or the object? – How about "float" or "pine"? Are they the thing or some other idea of the thing? It is this doubling that catches me, the thought that there can be two contradictory notions at once. There is something of that old picture - is it a rabbit or a duck? Your mind can grasp either one or the other but never both and strangely neither seem really correct on its own. It is this inbetweenness that holds me. I am looking for that point of balance or perhaps imbalance in the orchestration of my objects, certain parts come into sharp focus, make sense – but then comes ambiguity, soft confusion– are things what you thought they were? I am interested in placing the known against the unknown, in brushing the concrete against the abstract.Perhaps this is the root of my interest in domestic objects, in the possibilities that exist in that moment of one inherent truth against another. It seems key to approach these ideas in terms of the functional, in itself another doubling - of use & beauty, ergonomics & history, novelty & propriety. In recent years I have spent time in the archives of the Wolfsonian museum in Miami, Florida and the Cooper Hewitt in NYC looking at the roots of modernism. I was a visiting researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden walking the paths of the scientist Linnaeus and cataloging early wallpaper. The nature of my ceramic work has also changed quite a bit since my tenure appointment. I have adapted my work to current industrial processes - beginning with slip casting, and moving on towards CAD / CAM, CNC milling and rapid prototyping. I believe this investment of time will enable me move my work into more complicated arenas and broaden the dialogue about functional / domestic work in the field of ceramics. |
Work Title/Description Split Larva Teapot, Darwins Garden Series, 1996, pressmolded and assembled porcelain, 9 x 7 x 3", courtesy of the artist |
My work for the most part consists of somewhat functional objects made of hard dense clay. I play with the clash of spare and exuberant. I want my objects to be at once both reductive and additive – forms pared down but then repeated, the action and interaction of parts building the whole. Color serves to further this purpose, alternately clarifying or obscuring the identifiable. Some shapes are recognizable, or at least familiar, is it a cigar, a pair of pants, a scrub brush? Could that be a tree or part of a fence?