Candelabra with Flowers by Susan Nemeth 2024

Eighteenth-century European porcelains are my reference for the candelabras. But these symbols of perfection eliminate the mark of the maker. Disrupting, simplifying, and transforming these objects creates a bare essential quality, almost a caricature. I am investigating the outcomes of rapid sketching, capturing the essence of the quick sketch and translating this into sculptures of pottery. Starting with drawing in museums, I make, remake, and redraw to create doodles on paper and in clay. I am interested in how, by repeatedly sketching a piece from memory, the unconscious jotting becomes more fluid, energized, and anthropomorphic as it mutates, and by what means this translates into ceramic. Porcelain is chosen for its purity, sensitivity, and paradoxical qualities of fragility and strength.