Ceramics Monthly: In your ceramics practice, you merge traditional comic-style illustration and functional pottery. What is your aim in combining these media? What does the vessel as a delivery method provide to your drawings?
Ian M. Petrie: A wall-hung screen print may occasionally hold one’s attention while walking down the hallway, a comic book shelved snuggly in a bookcase might sporadically be dusted off and idly skimmed in a moment of leisure, but over time the fog of familiarity settles in. Slowly, inevitably, the objects we choose to surround ourselves with fade into a sort of static-y, fallen-asleep-in-front-of-the-TV background noise. And sure, a deeply coffee-stained and ever-so-slightly chipped mug may slowly make its way to the back of the cupboard over the years, but few other art forms demand our attention and interaction as does functional pottery.
When paired with narrative work, the simple daily act of drinking a cup of coffee becomes an invitation to re-interpret the imagery and story contained within this humble clay pot. And while we sit and sip our morning coffee, we may take a moment to ponder the story before us. Last night, after a particularly long day at work, a character’s smirk may have looked taunting, their dialog heavy with foreboding; but reinterpreted in a new light, the warm glow of a crisp spring morning, we now see it as playful, simply teasing. Whichever way the story may strike us at a given moment, functional pottery serves as the perfect vessel for narrative illustrations because it quite literally compels us to pick up this object and examine it over and over again.
CM: What inspires the illustrated narratives shown in your work? How do you select moments, settings, or situations to capture on clay?
IMP: Until recently, the source of my illustrations had been relatively grab-bag in nature. A narrative cross-section might come from an overheard snippet on the street, a calculated response to an exhibition prospectus, or simply an absent-minded doodle followed by a, “What is this person saying or thinking?” Whatever the origin, I relish capturing narrative fragments frozen in time, with uncertain origins and unknowable conclusions. In short, as if a single image in a comic book had been plucked from the page and displayed on its own.
And now, with my newest body of work, I am doing just that. By drawing my own comics and then selecting individual panels to screen print and apply to pottery, I have begun a playful new experiment in narrative disassociation. This has been a particularly interesting new process as the viewer sees firsthand what happens when a single comic panel is isolated and, in turn, how dramatically the meaning can change when an image is completely devoid of context.
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Ceramics Monthly: In your ceramics practice, you merge traditional comic-style illustration and functional pottery. What is your aim in combining these media? What does the vessel as a delivery method provide to your drawings?
Ian M. Petrie: A wall-hung screen print may occasionally hold one’s attention while walking down the hallway, a comic book shelved snuggly in a bookcase might sporadically be dusted off and idly skimmed in a moment of leisure, but over time the fog of familiarity settles in. Slowly, inevitably, the objects we choose to surround ourselves with fade into a sort of static-y, fallen-asleep-in-front-of-the-TV background noise. And sure, a deeply coffee-stained and ever-so-slightly chipped mug may slowly make its way to the back of the cupboard over the years, but few other art forms demand our attention and interaction as does functional pottery.
When paired with narrative work, the simple daily act of drinking a cup of coffee becomes an invitation to re-interpret the imagery and story contained within this humble clay pot. And while we sit and sip our morning coffee, we may take a moment to ponder the story before us. Last night, after a particularly long day at work, a character’s smirk may have looked taunting, their dialog heavy with foreboding; but reinterpreted in a new light, the warm glow of a crisp spring morning, we now see it as playful, simply teasing. Whichever way the story may strike us at a given moment, functional pottery serves as the perfect vessel for narrative illustrations because it quite literally compels us to pick up this object and examine it over and over again.
CM: What inspires the illustrated narratives shown in your work? How do you select moments, settings, or situations to capture on clay?
IMP: Until recently, the source of my illustrations had been relatively grab-bag in nature. A narrative cross-section might come from an overheard snippet on the street, a calculated response to an exhibition prospectus, or simply an absent-minded doodle followed by a, “What is this person saying or thinking?” Whatever the origin, I relish capturing narrative fragments frozen in time, with uncertain origins and unknowable conclusions. In short, as if a single image in a comic book had been plucked from the page and displayed on its own.
And now, with my newest body of work, I am doing just that. By drawing my own comics and then selecting individual panels to screen print and apply to pottery, I have begun a playful new experiment in narrative disassociation. This has been a particularly interesting new process as the viewer sees firsthand what happens when a single comic panel is isolated and, in turn, how dramatically the meaning can change when an image is completely devoid of context.
Photo: Amira Pualwan.
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