Nauticis Nugarum

For some time now I have been working towards creating a balance between my hand built and my thrown ceramic work. I feel that with my exhibition I have found a peace between the two. My body of work represents both ends of the spectrum, purely hand built, purely thrown, and somewhere in between. Under the sea, to sound a bit clichéd, is the over arching theme of my show, though all my pieces do not necessarily belong in the same dish set they are all related by this theme of an aquatic nature. Each piece was made to show a specific type of coral or animal in various growth states. As I began to build my skills in throwing and hand building, I started experimenting with combining the two. And with this I became more interested in building organic forms. Thus I had moved into the realm of aquatic life. I love the ocean and I find everything that lives in it so fascinating and so unique that I felt that it was something I could take inspiration from but then make it my own. What was seen in the gallery was not meant to exactly replicate coral and the animals realistically, but to pay tribute to, and then depart from. Nauticis Nugarum meaning “nautical nonsense” in Latin. I chose to translate the phrase to Latin because I wanted to use the scientific names for each species that I took inspiration form, and they are all in Latin. Nautical nonsense is meant to group together my show in the overly general theme of “under the sea” but at the same time keep them as separate sets. While each piece represents a different species that all reside in the oceans, around the world, the nonsensical part of it is that I didn’t choose a specific part of the world, or depth of the ocean, or anything to focus on while creating my pieces. I was purely driven by what appealed to me visually and what I thought would work well with the shape of my pieces. So, while on a surface everything seems to make sense visually, on a deeper level you would most likely not find these species of coral and animals in the same areas or parts of the world