Jane Margarette, Los Angeles, California

Ceramics Monthly: How do you come up with the forms and surfaces that are prevalent in your work, and why is it important to make your sculptures out of clay?

Jane Margarette: The pictorial protagonists of my work come from the natural world: winged creatures, bugs, flowers, and fruit. Adorned with chains and locks, the works transform into mechanisms for capture, control, and codependency. The creatures posture as both tough and fragile, functional and useless, as if they can withstand predation despite their precarious nature. And it is this contradiction between their desires and their abilities that defines the work.

1 I Must Have Missed You, 4 ft. 7 in. (1.4 m) in height, ceramics, glaze, fired to cone 5 in oxidation, 2022.

CM: Who is your ideal audience?

JM: The curious.

CM: What roles do you think makers play within our current culture? How do you think you contribute to it?

JM: One of the roles an artist can hold in our culture is to offer alternative perspectives on the human experience. I think good art has the ability to offer us a different way of thinking or question our relationship to our surroundings, whether that’s through introspection, critique, humor, or empathy. I’m interested in creating these psychic and emotional breaks from everyday life, which can be so crushingly brutal. And perhaps these small shifts in perspectives can eventually have larger implications in the way we think, behave, and treat others and our planet. I can only hope my work contributes in this way.

2 Chase a Rainbow, 6 ft. 2 in. (1.9 m) in height, ceramics, glaze, fired to cone 5 in oxidation, gold leaf, 2022. Photos courtesy of Anat Ebgi Gallery.

Learn more at http://janemargarette.com.

Topics: Ceramic Artists, Ceramic Sculpture

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