The Clay Studio offices, galleries, open studio, and school will be closed on Friday, July 4, 2025, in honor of the Independence Day Holiday.
Mary Gamble Barrett
To me, the interaction of colors flowing together in glazes, or light coming through porcelain, a window, or in an icon, signifies consciousness and transcendence of the physical world to the metaphysical.
Clay is strong yet easily broken. The porcelain vessel, thin walled and translucent,
evokes a sense of the duality of strength vs. fragility. The broken vessel reveals its
interior, suggesting inside vs. outside, presence vs. absence, permanence vs.
impermanence. My earlier porcelain sculpture from vessels which have been cut up and
reconfigured or nested, are preserved and reborn as a new kind of relic. I am
concerned with the juncture where the present becomes the past, and the past meets
the present through memory.
My recent work, egg tempera paintings and ceramic tiles, is inspired by
sacred geometry (found in mentor Bill Daley’s sculpture and in Byzantine Iconography)
and in the magic of color and clay. The creation of these works has been both
meditative and cathartic for me, after the passing of my husband and best friend. This
work reflects my concern with dualities in life: order/chaos, inside/outside, physical/
metaphysical(spiritual) and combines chaotic swirls of color wash with the structure of
symbolic geometry.
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Did you Know?
50% of your purchase directly supports the artist, and 50% of
your purchase supports the operations of The Clay Studio, a nonprofit that serves 35,000 people,
including 2,000 underserved school children, each year.
