Regina Wickham, Vessels

About the Artist

I belong to the tradition of vessel makers. I’ve been a studio potter since 1975 and studied at Bennington with Stanley Rosen and Jane Abersold. I work on the wheel, forming containers for flowers, food, air. Clay is the skin to contain a volume, the line to draw a profile. I think of long tall vessels as forms that stand as a person, defining and incorporating space. I feel a kinship with Chinese ceramics and like to sketch vases to understand the success of their curves, the space they envelop and the space they exclude. I think of platters as canvas for color and, with their concave shape, as holders of volumes beyond themselves as the line they begin to define is completed in the mind. I think of glazing as painting, as landscape, seascape, night sky. I layer and juxtapose color and texture, incorporating the breaking- up effects of glaze on glaze, working with or against the geometry of wheel thrown pieces. I fire to cone 10 reduction. There are the surprises in the final piece – subtleties of proportion, stance, interaction of color and object, serendipitous melding of glaze, oxide and flame pattern. And always there is the tradition of the gifts of the kiln.

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