Ceramics

Lydia Hardwick’s Abstract Ceramic Art Objects

lydia hardwick

I recent­ly became acquaint­ed with Lydia Hard­wick­’s abstract ceram­ics because of her new show up on Buy Some Damn Art. I’m lov­ing the col­ors and the sur­face design, as well as all of the ran­dom lit­tle bits that are mixed in.

In an inter­view with Kate Sin­gle­ton of BSDA, Hard­wick gives a detailed expla­na­tion of her process, which I find fascinating:

I use porce­lain because it is very white. This means that when I mix colour­ing oxides and stains into it, the colours show up well. I tend to work quick­ly, mak­ing a lot of pieces in one go. Some­times I squash the clay into big flat sheets, and cut out shapes to cre­ate a sort of col­lage. I also use porce­lain a lot in its liq­uid form. This is called ‘slip’. I mix news­pa­per pulp into it, which makes it look a bit like por­ridge. I then pour the sub­stance onto a sur­face and drop oth­er small frag­ments of porce­lain into it. When this dries, I might paint stained porce­lain slip onto the sur­face. The true colours don’t emerge until the work has been fired in the kiln, so there is a lot of guess­work involved.

I would rec­om­mend read­ing the entire inter­view. It’s real­ly inter­est­ing! And, if you’re inter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing any of these works, mosey on over to Buy Some Damn Art.

lydia hardwick lydia6 lydia5lydia4 lydia3 lydia2