Tradition and Hi-Tech: The New Dance of Contemporary Ceramics
Written by Martina Laird-Westib
2018
Artist Heather Lott starts with the physical, -with the wheel-thrown or the hand-built object. Her movements at the pottery wheel often generate her starting point. The pots she produces, her cups, plates, bowls and vases are organic formations and are the results of a call-and-response experience with the clay. In ceramics the physical properties of clay prescribe certain actions, in tandem however, Lott leads the clay beyond the materiality inherent to ceramics as a whole and seeks the metaphor. Her works are bodily, inviting to the touch, their physicality is layered with glazing techniques that re-translate the surface each time they are applied.
Her background in drawing and sculpture are amalgamated into the two streams of her line of production. In the first stream the layers of meaning in her work are embedded in the process she uses to glaze them. The clay bodies are intended for use, to connect with and be used by people. In these pieces, her life drawings of live models are scanned and bitmapped. Moments of her drawing time are captured and rewritten digitally; these prints are silk-screened onto the ceramic surfaces. Through further abstraction she uses blind contour drawings of the original sketches to scraffito the slipped and glazed surfaces. The results are layered and further abstracted after each step in the process resulting in objects that subtly hint at the human body, through a discrete line or gesture.
This constant act of retranslating information is a leitmotif through Lott’s work. In her second stream of production, the process of Rhino 3D modeling presents a new partner in the dance. Far from being choreographed by the computer, her responsive steps intervene to allow elements of chance and new possibilities to arise. She scans the finished pieces, and lets the computer translate the 3D image into a computer version of the object. The result is a computer-generated map, drawn from the original. Stripped-down of any flourish of line or sensibility of the hand-made, it is cold and clean and very digital, often even capturing glitches. The drawings are then 3D printed in clay, and these results call to Lott for the next move. She then chooses the elements of the 3D clay print she would like to replace, and builds that piece by hand to reintroduce them into the composition. Using the computer as a tool, Lott is compelled to compensate for the computer’s lack of human touch. The process is gradual, and results in a juxtaposition of the handmade and computer generated within each piece.
The constant change in tempo adds life to a partnership with the computer. Akin to a swing dance with a stranger, the actions are at once familiar but new and un-choreographed.
“The 3d Model lets me see the object in a different way every time. It is no longer a physical object, but merely a numerical concept and that distance gives me the freedom to not be too precious with the material.”
Lott’s ceramics don’t merely evolve, they adapt to a world where the human and computer relationship is redefining not only the spaces we live in, but our very bodies. Her work represents the dance we have ahead of us, and the agency we have as humans to cut-in.