Designing and Developing Rolled, Curled Porcelain Sculptures Janice Jakielski’s Impossible Objects! Leigh Taylor Mickelson

Today's post falls into the "knock-your-socks-off inspirational" category. In this post, an excerpt from the Ceramics Monthly archive, we take a look at the mind-blowing porcelain sculptures of Janice Jakielski.

Janice's work is akin to paper cutting, which is a fascinating and challenging medium in and of itself, but imagine doing it with clay! We'll give you a glimpse into Janice's process and let you marvel at her patience, vision, and skill! –Jennifer Poellot Harnetty, editor

PS. To see more images of Janet Jakeilski's sculptures and learn more about her process and inspiration, check out the January, 2021 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

From a young age, Janice Jakielski was taught to use her hands to change the world. And when you look at her exquisite ceramic objects, she will certainly rock your world. For those with an experienced eye, it is not often these days that you can look at a ceramic object and not know how it was made. Through the use of clever content, meticulous detail, and material ambiguity, you are drawn in to closely investigate Jakielski’s work. There, while being seduced by what is said and not said, you are challenged by the notion of what clay is and can be.

Breaking the Rules and New Materials

The majority of Jakielski’s current work utilizes tape-casting techniques. A New England Craft Artist Award through the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, as well as a fellowship in 2019 from the Massachusetts Cultural Council enabled her to acquire the unique equipment needed to dive into it: a high-shear mixer (which mixes beautifully without needing to sieve materials), a tape-casting machine (typically the ones used in industry are 15–30 feet long, but hers is smaller), a rheometer (which checks viscosity of the material), and a ball mill. Basically, colored clay materials are mixed with binders and plasticizers, like Elmer’s glue.

The clay-glue combination is mixed and then squeezed onto sheets of plastic. It sets up and when Jakielski is ready to use it, she peels off the plastic. It is clay with a paper quality—incredibly flexible and thin—and remains workable over a long period of time. In the firing, the non-clay materials fire out, leaving only the colored porcelain behind. She calls it thin-cast porcelain, and Jakielski and her husband have a patent pending on their unique process.

To work with this new material, Jakielski decided to reacquaint herself with what it is about clay that seduced her in the first place. “I remembered as a teenager lusting after Sèvres and wanted to get back to that original inspiration. I still love pots. I just needed to make pots in a way that suits me. I began a quest for that magical porcelain but have been pushing the boundaries of what that can be.” The forms that she chooses are inspired from historic ceramic sources. Jakielski shares, “I feel a kinship with Sèvres and Meissen as well as the other early-European porcelain factories in their quest for a seemingly impossible porcelain and pursuit of the exquisite object. I also pull inspiration from historic Japanese, Chinese, and Persian wares.” Her objects are instantly recognizable, yet totally reimagined.

Developing and Designing Porcelain Sculptures

Spending a considerable amount of time in the development and design phase before actually getting into the ceramic making, Jakielski visualizes, sketches, and then digitally draws everything on her computer in detail, where she can conceptualize the porcelain layers. Color families are chosen from her vast test-tile collection and laid out to be considered while drawing. She uses maquettes to experiment with scale and will adjust and adjust until everything clicks into place.

“Much of my work is created by stacking layers of thin colored porcelain, so I need to think carefully about how the pieces will be assembled, Jakielski explains. “It’s similar to a printmaking process, starting from the bottom layer of color and working my way to the top.” For the more complex designs, she creates detailed lists of what is happening at each layer so she can refer back to her notes when she is assembling the objects. On the computer, the three-dimensional reference objects are transformed into two dimensions. Using a vinyl cutter to cut the tape-cast material as well as some hand cutting, the objects are made three dimensional again by stacking the thin layers of colored porcelain and positioning them so that each precise cut reveals something new. The work is then assembled and fired to cone 6.

the author Leigh Taylor Mickelson is an artist, writer, curator, and independent consultant working with arts businesses and nonprofits to help them develop and grow. Visit her website at www.leightaylormickelson.comto learn more.