Ceramist Anne Butler
In his studio in Northern Ireland, ceramic artist Anne Butler grabs the plastic cup filled with liquefied Parian porcelain and pours it onto the canvas in front of her, filling the space drop by drop. She spreads the pale blue paste with a card, creates straight lines on the thick rectangles the sweep has forged, and repeats the process until she coats the canvas with the solution.
Her hand moves seamlessly, the epitome of her decades of experimentation and passion for her craft, as she applies a layer of white porcelain over blue, trims the edges of her canvas as the compound dries and transfers the thin sheet on a surface next to it. She cuts it into pieces and inserts them into a bowl-shaped mould. Her subtlety soon unveils the charm of her delicate movement as she lights her kiln, piles up the layers of dried Parian porcelain and manifests finely spun ceramics that capture the passage of time.
Trained in ceramics at the University of Ulster and the University of Wales in Cardiff, the deep relationship Anne forged with Parian porcelain grew into an intrinsic connection between her act of creating sculptures and his endless experimentation with fluid, solid, raw and fire. china states. “A wide palette of techniques, which includes casting, hand construction and cyanotype printing, is continually challenged and developed to contrast the precision of industrial techniques and geometric structure with the fallibility of the handmade”, she writes.
images of Anne Butler / banner image from her instagram
A delicate process
The delicacy of her sculptures recites the commandments that Anne must follow to reduce the breakages of her works. What she originally designs before heating the sculptures can be changed. Nothing or everything remains the same. The reaction depends on the endurance of the thin porcelain plates in the face of fire and on the shape that Anne lends them. “The sculptures are fired multiple times and explore concepts associated with parian’s firing density as well as its satiny, marbled quality when solid, its gravity and layering when layered, and its delicate flowing translucency akin to a fabric when it is thin”, Anne writes.
The versatility of Parian porcelain cements the vernacular that Anne seeks to establish: sculptures oscillating between lightness and diaphanous, made with care and mastery. On closer inspection, the layers of his “Objects of Time” series prophesy a balm of recklessness and modern technology, a twinkling that takes the viewer back to the days of traditional craftsmanship and found objects in his former daily life.
Anne’s ‘Analogue’ depicts the rotary phone making a comeback in the home, in retaliation for the arrival of smartphones and instant messaging apps. The wax telephone appears to have been crafted from vaporous paper, but the fluidity of Parian porcelain gave it hyperrealistic imagery. In ‘Shift’, the artist looks back to the days when typewriters and their big grouchy keys dominated desks and writers’ dens as she interpreted the writing implement through stacks of porcelain sheets dried, cut into the shapes required to form a typewriter. .
Anne’s search for classic objects led her to create a sewing machine found in homes. Titled ‘Remnant’, crumpled porcelain covers make up the body of the tool, while an untextured fabric – still made from Parian porcelain – rests on the bottom of the machine to represent the textile being stitched. , so vivid that hands may fail to hesitate to touch the creation to check if everything is still porcelain.
Object of time series. “Displacement”, 2018.
Archaeology, geology and architecture
The artist shared that there is a certain distortion in her sculptures caused by the kiln, so that each work deviates from the precision or the way she originally intended it to be. If she had not experienced the fragility of Parian porcelain for a long time, she would not have been able to accept the beauty of the flaws that her creations produce.
The artist has also admitted that urban environments have influenced the way she views her designs, presaging the rows and folds she infuses into her art. The reminiscence of archaeology, geology and architecture solicits his creative zen and encourages him to explore the relationships between process, materiality and the passage of time.
‘My sculptures are inspired by the structure and dissolution of the organic and human. They are constructed, layered, excavated, deconstructed, collapsed and fragmented to reveal associations between past, present and future, material, cultural and individual memory as well as contrasting qualities such as strength and fallibility, permanence and the loss,’ she shares. At the sight of his ceramic works of Parian porcelain, the soothing union of contrasting and complementary elements comes to the surface to testify to his artistic desires.
Object of time series. “Displacement”, 2018.
Object of time series. “Vestige”, 2016.
Object of time series. “Vestige”, 2016.
Object of time series. “Analog”, 2015.
Object of time series. “Analog”, 2015.
project info:
Name: Anne Butler’s ceramics
series: objects of time
type: Paros porcelain
Matthew Burgos | design boom
May 08, 2022
