Saturday, March 16, 2013

Adele Thornhill Ceramics


I am so excited to welcome Adele Thornhill to the April 13th Lowcountry Artist Market. This is Adele's first Arist Market, so be sure to stop by her booth and welcome her! 
My mother spent many a weekend in Seagrove, NC, picking up beautiful pieces from the local potters. She would stock up on vases, bowls, and dishes; preparing for the inevitable bridal showers, birthdays, and baby showers to come. These made perfect gifts. Now, I do this myself - but no need to go to Seagrove. Just come by the Music Farm on April 13th and stock up!



Here's a little about Adele, from her site: 
After watching a friend working on the wheel in her high school’s pottery studio, Adele Thornhill sat down and threw her first bowl. It happened without planning or instruction, and she was instantly hooked. For the next two years, Adele lived and breathed clay. According to her teacher, Irina Okula, she “took to pottery like a duck takes to water.” However, after graduation, she put clay mostly behind her. College and then nine to fives took precedence.
In 2012, Adele took a ceramics class and rediscovered the part of her life that had been missing for far too long. She rededicated herself to pottery and began doing the intricate lace-like piercing that has become her trademark.
Just as a duck’s serene floating on the surface belies the frenzied paddling below, Adele’s process describes many seemingly-paradoxical syntheses of opposites. As the knife pierces, control, order, and rigidity are imposed on the fragile and malleable clay body. The obsessively repetitive process, tedious to some, is soothing and energizing for Adele. Like Yayoi Kusama, one of her major artistic influences, her repetitive process enables her to transcend mundanity in favor of, as Kusama puts it, “return[ing] to the infinite universe.”
Adele’s delicate work and lacy patterns are also inspired by her grandmother’s embroidery and needlework.  Her grandmother, Beryl, earned her living by sewing and embroidering intricate patterns on dress clothing and decorative home textiles.
Adele knows a piece is done when she’s pushed both the piece and her own patience to their limits. She hopes her work recalls complex beauty of handmade lacework of the past like her grandmother’s needlework while also communicating the great feeling of calm that can be found everywhere, even within chaos. 

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