Stephanie Marie Roos’ Restless Surfaces Kira Gutowski

Appears in the November 2022 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

The perception of art goes beyond rational thought and words. The figurative ceramic sculpture presented by Stephanie Marie Roos speaks primarily to our subconscious and creative mind, our intuition, and our emotions. Roos’ works help us explore how we perceive identity and the hidden parts of ourselves that are not expressed in our modern world.

Forging a Path

Roos grew up in an innately creative household. Her mother was an art teacher, and creative projects were constant companions in her early childhood. At the age of nine, Roos was thoroughly inspired by a local figurative ceramic artist, Bernd Zimmermann, and found a love of art and figurative sculpture. Roos explains that a seed of desire was planted, “I adored his work and I wanted to become an artist just like him. That was when my plan was actually set.” But her well-meaning parents encouraged a more sensible career—teaching—which she obediently followed. In addition to teaching art, Roos also trained and worked as a graphic designer. However, these paths were not fulfilling in a meaningful way, and her personal creativity and a desire for self-actualization pushed its way to the surface. Roos explored various artistic mediums, but finally the pull toward working with ceramics returned, and in 2012, she learned how to wheel throw, bought a kiln, and set up a studio in her home. Initially it was intended as a hobby, but immediate success and positive feedback, combined with the comfortable feeling of working with clay, cemented the idea to forge a way as a professional ceramic artist. 

Since then, Roos has not looked back. She now diligently works in the studio for around six solid hours each day. Because of this disciplined approach, Roos has produced a vast amount of work in a short span of time.

Developing a Personal Style and Platform

The emotive human figure has become synonymous with Roos’ personal style, and it provides the perfect platform to express a complex story. Her works are full of poignant images that instantly evoke feelings and emotions we can all relate to, without necessarily fully understanding the story that is being told. Her artwork perfectly embodies how we, as humans, grapple with identity, cultural norms and influences, questions about gender, our cognitive dissonance, as well as our intense desire for connection and acceptance—how we play out our personal story on the cultural stage. Each facet of her sculptures symbolizes an aspect of these individual stories. 

Using Color and Texture

The exteriors of Roos’ sculptures are minimally decorated so the attention is not drawn away from the sculptural form and the materiality. Color is used sparingly and specifically. For example, the woman depicted in Woman with Pom Beanie (2020) is almost entirely pale, with a bright red pom-pom on top of her beanie. From the front, everything appears to be normal; however, viewed from the back, the red pom-pom appears to be bleeding red down the woman’s back. Or in the work Coincidence (2019), the female figure is mostly light colored, except for her red boots, underwear, and the golden coins that she stands on as well as holds in her dress. Color is used to bring gravity to an aspect of the sculpture, usually an item that has cultural significance. 

The surfaces of Roos’ sculptures are deliberately kept imperfect. She lovingly calls them her “restless surfaces.” She explains, “I like that one leaves traces of oneself in the work. I don’t do smooth. Smooth makes the work lifeless.” The textured exteriors impart a feeling of movement and changeability and help convey the complexity of the inner emotive reality.

Recreating clothing with clay has its own fascination and challenges. The texture of the fabric, the way it falls around the body, and what the body looks like under the fabric are all aspects that draw Roos’ attention. The clothed person also provides an endless source of cultural analysis. Questions that Roos considers and researches include: Why has it become acceptable for Western women to wear pants but not acceptable for men to wear skirts? How can a hoodie represent danger? What is the significance of a bag? How does our attire separate or connect us? These questions arise through current affairs or themes found in photos or images. If a question holds her interest, Roos will do a deep dive into the subject matter, often going down a rabbit hole of historical and cultural questioning. This curiosity will occasionally lead her to dark places, but her search must go where it must—she is seemingly fearless in that regard. 

Representation and Emotions

The piece Protest Icon (2021) is particularly poignant, as the last few years have been colored by many political protests all over the world, including social movements such as Me Too and Black Lives Matter and environmental activism with Fridays for Future. Protest Icon depicts a teenage boy wearing a jacket with a fur-rimmed hood. The fur is golden, making it reminiscent of a halo depicted in religious iconography; however, the boy is also wearing a Levi’s t-shirt, possibly indicative of the personal conflict between cultural positioning and the desire for societal change. In addition, his youth and choice of clothing demonstrate the dissonance between the developing adult and the governing adults whom the teenager must confront with a request for change.  

Aside from a physical representation that is very realistic despite its stylistic abstraction, Roos’ strength lies in her ability to create an intimate portrayal of emotions and vulnerabilities that are usually not overt but lurk just beneath the surface. The subtle intricacies expressed in the body language of her sculptures give us a glimpse into the fleeting and enduring experiences we have as individuals. We are reminded that although we may be surrounded by people, our experience is our own, and we carry it alone. It is heavy, but it is also very beautiful. 

Monthly Method: Painterly and Graphical Process by Stephanie Marie Roos

When I was interviewed by Kira Gutowski for this Ceramics Monthly article, she asked me, “Why are the surfaces of your figures so . . . ?” she searched for the right word. I completed the question, “Why are they so . . . restless?”

The word restless came to me without thinking, but it aptly describes the searching process when a figure arises—the trial and error: building, removing, redoing . . . sketching in the clay, like drawing, finding signs. It is not always a happy moment, more a restless kind of thing. But the traces are part of the communication I have with the work, and it would feel like removing a part of the conversation if I would smooth the surface.

Clay allows me to work in this way, and with its different states—from a plastic mass to a hard object, to scratch in, to burnish, or to be used as a paintable slip. Painting with engobe is not just coloring. I also paint with plain slip to apply the smallest amounts of clay, resulting in a delicate change in the surface and the opportunity to scratch there again, to reveal what is underneath. This playing with layers, with rough and smooth, open and closed surfaces, allows me to picture, for example, parts of the body where the skin is very transparent, and you see bones or blood vessels or a transparent piece of clothing, or the layering of clothing. “What is beneath?” It is a fitting question for a narrative sculptor.

The surface is not an add-on, it is a painterly and graphical process, a principal part of the piece from the beginning. The illusionistic quality of clay is fantastic and seductive, it makes you want to rebuild the reality. 

But, I like to preserve the language of the material: the earthen, the porous.

Color has always been an important (and difficult) question for me. It was somehow not satisfactory for me to picture humans in one color. I started with different colored clays. Today, I use a ready gray stoneware. The gray body of the clay as the base color for the pieces, not absorbing or reflecting light too much, is the best starting point for shadowing and highlighting. Like in drawing. It is perfect as a neutral background, as a mixed tone for highs and lows.

I mix a slip with underglaze color or oxides for painting on the piece; the gray that shines through is then a shadowing in the cloth or skin. I have another slip of a clay that has a very warm color, which I often use for the skin when I like it to be felt as a warm part of the figure.

As a rule, I try to use color in the sense of only adding it when it supplies information to the piece in an expressive or symbolic way. I seldom use glaze, for example for shiny objects, or as a surface for applying ceramic decals later in the process.

the author Kira Gutowski is a freelance writer for German and international audiences with a focus on arts and culture. To learn more, visit kiragutowski.wordpress.com.