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Lisa Naples
Medias Used or Areas of Interest:
Ceramics
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I make functional earthenware pottery. I love being a potter. The fact that Im a practical sort of person isnt lost on these pots. Knowing theyll be used for eating and drinking, pouring and serving, matters to me.
Earthenware is my clay of choice because of its nature. Both in the forming and the firing, this forgiving clay indulges me. Also, it pleases my senses with its visual beauty and earthy smell. And, without a doubt, the historical pots that resonate most loudly and clearly in my mind and heart are all made from earthenware (pre-historic Crete, Cyprus and Mesopotamia).
Electric kilns provide the only type of firing that makes sense for this body of work. The stability of the electrically heated atmosphere promises not to undo what Ive taken so much time and care to do (i.e., placing patterns and images where I feel they belong on the form, which themselves are a complex play of geometry). I still get to have my surprises though. The marriage of radiant heat being held at glaze temperature and my particular combination of slips, glazes and metals yield a blurring of painted lines and dripping of color
its sort of like having your cake and eating it too.
Most of the work I make is slab-built, occasionally I have use for thrown parts as well. I slip cast some of the more widely demanded, complicated, hand-built forms. And I throw (on a Brent C) when it suits the idea. All the work is functional and made of earthenware clay (the recipe for which I developed).
The pots are decorated with white and black slip (liquid clay) which is applied with bamboo brushes. After bisque firing to cone 06, transparent, colored glazes are applied. The pieces are then glaze fired to cone 03 in an electric kiln.
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