Jocelyn Jenkins
At a fundamental level, all of my work is inspired by place. Not so much by the places I inhabit, but by the places that I carry with me. Memories attached to the places I move through imbue them with meaning and make them places I can "visit" at any time. This piece is an homage to a particular place that I carry with me; a place where I have roots and that I return to often, the east coast of Canada. It is a nostalgic piece with simplified imagery, in vivid colour. For me, these choices mimic the way memory selectively highlights things that are important to us as individuals. This platter captures specific aspects that draw me to this "place," with its hidden scene on the reverse side, and its borders that celebrate the diverse qualities of the place.
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Biography
I turned from engineering to ceramics more than a decade ago. Although I live and work in Ottawa, I have strong ties to the Maritimes. Both places furnish natural images that repeat throughout my ceramic work. I spend roughly half of my time teaching and running a community studio and the other half creating my own work. My work consists of functional pieces as well as objects that have a less utilitarian existence. I have a background in printmaking and painting: as time goes on, both of these interests have more and more influence on my ceramic work. Originally the form of a vessel or an object claimed my attention. Lately, I am pushing these forms to provide surfaces to decorate using sgraffito or underglaze brushwork. More and more often, I find myself extracting figures from the two-dimensional work and giving them leave to express themselves in three-dimensional form.Artist Statement
Sgraffito is my preferred surface decoration technique because it permits me to pluck images from my daily life (and beyond!) and to move back and forth across the blurry line that divides pure decoration from narration. The interplay between the form, and the sgraffito decoration is one of the most satisfying parts of the making process. The more surfaces the vessel offers for decoration, the more interesting the interaction becomes. And yet even a simple plate with a front and a back still yields endless opportunities to tell a story.Jocelyn Jenkins Pottery
https://www.jocelynjenkinspottery.ca// Click here to view my OGP Gallery?Long ago I chose to study engineering instead of fine arts. But nothing is carved in stone! Decades later I find myself making ceramics with a passion for the details.
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