Artist Statement

Melissa Lind

Artist Statement

As a young child playing in the country side, making shapes or fortresses out of water, sticks and dirt, I made a special connection with Mother Nature. Her wondrous shapes and extraordinary wildlife gives my life inspiration. Clay is my connection to the earth, literally. A professor in my first ceramics class inspired me and my love for the earth. He created an unstoppable force. At this time I realized my true calling. I was born to create and move people the same way he touched me.

Clay is a medium that you can touch and instantly leave a mark. The immediate visual results that can be made simply by using your body give me a very intimate connection with my work. This gives me a feeling of accomplishment everyday that I crave, while it challenges my patience and planning. Improvising and overcoming complications that building and working with the chemistry in glaze making and firing also satisfies my love of science.

One of the wonderful things I admire is the human body and the bizarre shapes the human body creates. Starting with thrown shapes meant to symbolize the female genitalia I stumbled onto a form that intrigues me, a form consisting of numerous layers creating depth. These thrown pieces with layers now remind me of flowers. This new love for thrown layered pieces has aroused new inspirations, using and discovering glaze and firing techniques I had never done. This has created a new way of looking at my work. When in the beginning touching and molding the clay was exciting enough to intrigue me, there is now a developing understanding for finishing the work and technical processes. This is the start of a new mind set, even more curious of chemical changes of each material used in the firing process. The possibilities will never end and even with every waking moment I live I will never know everything there is about the science that is firing.