Ann Mallory

"I favor clean volumes, minimal surface decoration and rightness of scale, which promotes
a sense of well being, serenity, and interior balance auspicious for thought."

Ann Mallory's ceramic and bronze Contemplation Vessels express three dimensionally a focus on the quiet, spiritual essence of containment. Her ceramic Casings are inspired by the self-excreted or self-constructed protection many insects create for metamorphosis to occur. The Ceramic and Iron Sculptures frame the beauty of fruit, and unseen spaces between fruit, piled in containers. The iron is a three dimensional sketch defining the space within which to consider the lusciousness of these forms. All of her work celebrates the ceremonial, contemplative, reverential needs of humans to have objects that elevate the rituals of living, focus the powers of meditation, and add the strength of beauty to their souls.

Natural form and texture, and the human emotions it evokes, are a never-ending source of inspiration. Though many of the Contemplation Vessels can contain water and be placed in the garden for meditation or to attract birds, Mallory makes her work to have presence, to be enough when alone.

The memory of a wet, plastic beginning on the potters' wheel is evident in much of the work as well as the textural stretch marks in clay handled on the brink of collapse. Work skillfully shaped with very soft clay allows for extremes of manipulation but also requires considerable risk taking and planning ahead. Pieces often receive multiple firings to achieve the unique glazes and sensuous textures. Both Eastern and European throwing techniques are used in achieving a forthright dignity and substantiality in the Contemplation Vessels, forms that are often reminiscent of ancient sentinel boulders, offering themselves to hold ruminations as well as rain, leaves, sunlight and shadow.

"All of us go through profound life changes at one time or another. My Casings are sculptural vessels metaphorically protecting a spiritual, emotional condition of vulnerability. Self-created protection is essential while the life within is dramatically changing. When the casing is no longer needed, it is opened from within."

"Pears and apples appeal to me for their sensual curves and shape in the hand, as well as place in mythologies, religions and stories from the beginning of time. They are very luscious, seductive, feminine fruit which remain elegant and a bit mysterious even while being common in some form on every continent of the world. I'm particularly interested in the beautiful spaces created between shapes when they are piled within containers and in the shadows created by their relationships to each other. I use glaze colors not true in nature to   further dramatize the forms and their relationships to each other."