About the Artist
Bio
Priscilla Hollingsworth is a ceramic artist whose work includes sculpture, installations, and vessels. She has shown her work in numerous individual and group exhibitions across the United States from 1985 to the present. Photographs of her work have been published in seven recent books, including 500 Vases (Lark Books, 2010), 500 Tiles (Lark Books, 2008) and Ceramics: A Potter's Handbook (Glenn Nelson and Richard Burkett, Harcourt College Publishers, 2002).
Ms. Hollingsworth has received residency awards from the Kohler Company's Arts/Industry Program; the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada; the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine; Artpark in Lewiston, New York; and the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. She has received individual artist grants from the states of Georgia and Indiana. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Indiana University in Bloomington, and an A.B. degree from Princeton University, where she studied with Toshiko Takaezu. She earned her high school diploma in visual arts from the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. Currently, Ms. Hollingsworth lives and works in Augusta, Georgia.
Ms. Hollingsworth has received residency awards from the Kohler Company's Arts/Industry Program; the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada; the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine; Artpark in Lewiston, New York; and the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. She has received individual artist grants from the states of Georgia and Indiana. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Indiana University in Bloomington, and an A.B. degree from Princeton University, where she studied with Toshiko Takaezu. She earned her high school diploma in visual arts from the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. Currently, Ms. Hollingsworth lives and works in Augusta, Georgia.
Artist's Statement
Vessels:
I often make clay vessels in a series, so that I can try out several ideas at once. These are pots to be looked at rather than used, although the act of visual contemplation is certainly a function, too. I am inspired by plant forms and the movement of water over sea life. I am interested in rich juxtapositions of color.
Having studied with potters, I think about the parts of the pot: foot, base, body (or belly), shoulder, lip, handles. These categories become areas of formal invention for me. I look at pots in history, such as Neolithic earthenware, Moorish decorated urns with flaring handles, eighteenth century European soft paste porcelains with extravagant decoration. I also look at architecture and its decoration from several eras.
If I had lived in another time, I might want my work to appear to be technically perfect, with smooth surfaces seemingly untouched by the human hand. But as a contemporary artist, I recognize that I live in a materially wealthy society in which perfect (but soulless) machine-made replicas can be purchased cheaply in any discount department store. I follow in the long line of artists from William Morris in the mid-nineteenth century to the present day who make the antidote to the mass-produced object: the thoroughly handmade object of beauty meant to be present in the daily life of the home.
My favorite clay body is a light-to-medium orange terra cotta that is formulated mostly from clay mined in Georgia. I use a variety of glaze treatments, from bright and shiny to semi-matte to dry and matte. It is very important for me to get a contrast of color and surface reflection. To this end, I often glaze fire a given piece multiple times.
downloadable version:
Having studied with potters, I think about the parts of the pot: foot, base, body (or belly), shoulder, lip, handles. These categories become areas of formal invention for me. I look at pots in history, such as Neolithic earthenware, Moorish decorated urns with flaring handles, eighteenth century European soft paste porcelains with extravagant decoration. I also look at architecture and its decoration from several eras.
If I had lived in another time, I might want my work to appear to be technically perfect, with smooth surfaces seemingly untouched by the human hand. But as a contemporary artist, I recognize that I live in a materially wealthy society in which perfect (but soulless) machine-made replicas can be purchased cheaply in any discount department store. I follow in the long line of artists from William Morris in the mid-nineteenth century to the present day who make the antidote to the mass-produced object: the thoroughly handmade object of beauty meant to be present in the daily life of the home.
My favorite clay body is a light-to-medium orange terra cotta that is formulated mostly from clay mined in Georgia. I use a variety of glaze treatments, from bright and shiny to semi-matte to dry and matte. It is very important for me to get a contrast of color and surface reflection. To this end, I often glaze fire a given piece multiple times.
downloadable version:
| priscilla_hollingsworth_artists_statement_-_vessels.pdf |
Issues in sculpture, installations, and my artmaking in general:
- Form and structure in the natural world, especially forms of plants and animals. Inevitably, viewers will also think about the human body.
- Collecting as a phenomenon (why do we collect so much stuff? What do we collect? What do we do with it?)
- Counting and arranging (relationships between parts. Arrays and displays.)
- Repetition (as in nature, as in collecting things, but especially as in music. Music has a logic and structure, and we experience it most strongly in an emotional, intuitive way.)
- Issues of making – handmaking, craft (or art) as considered against manufacturing.
- Imperfection/humanity versus perfection/the ideal. How does the making (as in the construction, the mark of the hand, any irregularities) of the objects you see here interact with the more abstract concepts that the work clearly references?
- Artificial vs. natural, human vs. nature, the nature of being human (body, soul, mind?). This is a rich tangle of issues.
- Play. It’s my major method of thinking. Children will understand immediately.
downloadable version:
| priscilla_hollingsworth_sculpture_statement.pdf |