Incised iron pot

Description

Artist Statement

Helen Kunzman is a potter who creates wheel-thrown and altered vessels. Her work combines the aesthetics of East and West . She is influenced by the profound tea bowls of Japan with its interplay of craftsmanship and raw nature – and the British ceramic artists Lucie Rie and Hans Coper – and the post-minimalist conceptual artist Eva Hesse.

She states “For me the wheel is integral in the process of creation. I may begin with the pure form of the thrown pot and build onto it a flaked and broken surface texture. Sometimes I add coils – stretching them until broken but still intact and surviving the process. Sometimes I’ll throw a piece and stretch and push the clay off-center – almost to the breaking point. The broken surfaces are like that of the earth – and ourselves – my personal memento mori and my reminder of the cycle of life and its fragility.

I create my own glaze recipes. I want the clay body to come through – the glaze being like a skin rather than a dense cover. I believe that the function of the glaze is to maximize form thus bringing the pot to its best level. Currently I’m finding myself drawn back to shapes which allude to the rounded form of the egg. I believe that a universe is contained in that simple form – so round and so deep”.

Helen Kunzman’s vessels evoke a sense of prehistory – of something archeological. This sensibility in part derives from her years of experience as a specialist in the centuries-old paintings of medieval India and her work – since 1982 – as an art
conservator of ancient artworks on paper in the field of old master drawings and the Rajput and Islamic paintings of India. She is the co-founder of Artifacts Collections of New York. She lives and works in South Salem, NY.