Capture d’ecran

source: elizaauwordpress

Eliza Au received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (2005) and her MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University (2009). Au’s work is ceramic based and centers around the process of slipcasting. She is interested in how sacred space is transformed by the use of pattern and geometry in Gothic and Islamic architecture. She is interested in how systems work and how they relate to symmetry, repetition and scale. In recent work, she is expanding into other materials, including paper, metal, glass and wax.

She has previously completed residencies with Greenwich House Pottery (NYC, NY), The Museum of Contemporary Craft (Portland, OR), The Pilchuck Glass School (Stanwood, WA) and the Corning Museum of Glass (Corning, NY). Recent exhibitions include the 66th Scripps Ceramic Annual at Scripps College and The RBC Emerging Artist People’s Choice Award at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, ON.
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source: ceramicartsdailyorg

Eliza Au combines both high-tech and low-tech methods to make her beautiful and complex ceramic sculptures that consist of repeating patterns. Inspired by spiritual artifacts from both the East and West (mandalas, rose windows, prayer carpets), Au sees her the symmetry and order in her work as a metaphor for finding inner peace.

Though she begins her process using three dimensional computer modeling and Computer Numerical Controlled milling, it all comes together in a good old wooden box. In today’s post, an excerpt from the March 2012 Ceramics Monthly, Eliza shares her process and casting slip recipe and author Amy Gogarty tells us a bit more about the work. – Jennifer Harnetty, editor.

Eliza Au loves pattern, symmetry, and order, finding metaphors for inner peace and spiritual healing in organized, repeating forms. In her work, she arranges linear ornaments around a central axis, a motif she identifies in spiritual artifacts from both the East and West including mandalas, rose windows, and prayer carpets. She points to attributes of symmetry and repetition in the cycle of life, DNA patterns, and the cosmos, with “its mathematical complexity, infinite repetitions, and compositions.”

Au works extensively with molds to produce the large numbers of identical units required for her installations. Introduced to mold-making and casting processes when she took a class with Frank Bosco at RISD, she was drawn to a technique that allowed for perfect repetition, and she felt she had found her direction in ceramics. Unlike many who cast from nature or found objects, Au was never interested in replicating the everyday. Instead, she preferred to make conceptual statements based on complex interlocking structures, which required extensive planning and preliminary models.

Molds enable her to work across media. She is sensitive to the intrinsic qualities of her materials and allows them to influence each other through what she calls “cross-pollination.” Often, economic factors govern her choice of material. For example, a work that would take a long time to make in metal or ceramics can be made quickly from paper, something she discovered early on when using paper to mock-up an idea. She came to see the soft drape of the paper as something positive to be exploited rather than overlooked, and she brings a similar openness to the use of digital technology.

With the advent of CNC (Computer Numerical Controlled) milling and the Rhinoceros™ (Rhino) 3-D modelling program, Au is able to bring a project from concept to completion more quickly and with greater assurance. Rhino allows her to design a form, examine it from any direction, and evaluate different aspects of her model efficiently. She has used CNC technology to produce prototypes for glass projects, but she often prefers to make her original from Victory Brown microcrystalline wax using her Rhino drawing as a guide. For slip-casting clay, she begins with soft plaster, which she carves into a model and later casts to make a mold. In addition to plaster, she has worked with silicone and other materials depending on the requirements for the particular material she is casting.

The Fragility of Belief, 4 feet six inches in length, cast glass
Au’s interest in spiritual and personal exploration is independent of any specific religious or philosophical system. Her use of ornaments and patterns from a variety of contexts reflects her placement in a multicultural society. The use of pattern and ornament to express the sacred has deep roots in many cultures. In Ornament: A Modern Perspective, art historian James Trilling writes that displays of luxury constitute an “almost universally understood metaphor for the sacred veneration made visible and tangible an offering up of that which is most demanding of effort, skill, and expense.”1 Although Au’s sculptures and installations do not make specific religious claims, they focus effort and skill toward suggestions of the sacred.

Axis consists of 27 modules arranged in a cube with nine columns, each stacked three modules high. Each module consists of twelve slip-cast stoneware components measuring six inches square when cast and slightly less when fired. The modules are assembled in layers inside a wooden box prior to bisquing (see Building in a Box below). The whole is spray-glazed a deep blue-green that breaks to yellow-green and bright blue at the edges. Tips to the curling forms are glazed yellow, making the overall construction rich and variegated. The cubic arrangement resembles a dense thicket or a cage constructed from Gothic tracery. The title was arrived at only after the work was completed and refers to the three axes (X, Y, and Z), that constitute the mathematical definition of three-dimensional space. From certain angles, the form is clear and easily read, while from others, the eye becomes lost in teasing out and following the complex, curving forms.

While Axis is strongly three dimensional, Au also produces floor- and wall-based works that recall carpets or textiles from the Middle East and Asia. The use of the prayer-carpet format suggests prayer and meditation, the creation of a sacred space. Au points to the combination of mathematical relationships, abstract vegetal forms, and potentially limitless repetition that were thought to represent the divine through replicating the underlying patterns of nature. She responds to the color, texture, and softness of carpets, and plays with dualities of hard/soft, rigid/flexible, and durable/fragile that emerge through contrasting ceramics, glass, and textile.