Jennifer Lee Dark peat, pale haloed vanishing traces
Hand building, that most ancient and primitive of ceramic construction methods reaches new heights in the hands of Jennifer Lee. In this, her first Australian exhibition, sixteen spare and elegant vessel forms grace the minimalist space of the Liverpool St Gallery with a serenity that is palpable. This is a gallery more known for its shows of paintings and photography and this first foray into an exhibition of ceramics highlights the suitability of the space to this purpose. Polished concrete floors and bare white walls, lit by floor to ceiling north facing windows provide an environment in which the dialogue between the works and the viewer is unimpeded by distraction.
Lee is a ceramicist of long standing acclaim on the international stage. With regular exhibitions in England and the United States , she is well known to international collectors. Her work is held in museum collections in the UK , USA , Europe, Scandinavia and Japan .
The work, concentrating on both bowl and cylinder forms, invokes a sense of timelessness. The pots carry echoes of the simplicity of a burnished, pit fired Chilean water pot, or the minimalism of a Zen tea bowl. The resultant quiet statement made by these pieces comes by way of concentrated study of materials, meticulous testing and recording of potential effects and an extremely focused, methodical process of evaluation, piece by piece.
Lee uses an English manufactured stoneware body that takes colours well. The texture evident on the burnished surface is an integral part of the clay body, not added grog. She has worked with coloured clays for nearly three decades, eschewing glazes for the subtler effects of oxides collected from all over the world. The oxides are added to the clay body half a percent at a time, with the varying results being recorded and thoroughly investigated. Differences in granular makeup produce different results in the finished piece-a grainier finish being produced by a coarser textured oxide-as does the age of the mixed clay. A long forgotten bag of clay, left at the farm where Lee grew up for many years, yielded a very different effect, the now strongly crystallised mix forming a rich, strongly speckled finish, evident on the top of Pale bronze, speckled collar , 2005.
Initially, Lee threw pots on the wheel, although not using coloured clays. She moved to hand building techniques using, early on, a combination of methods. She started with moulds, utilising inlay and onlay techniques, resulting in more patterned decorative surfaces. From there she combined moulded bases with built up continuations of the pots. The pieces in this current collection have pinched bases with flattened coils added to build the rest of the pot. The coloured clays are introduced by splitting open the pot and inserting traces which are then incorporated as the join is sealed again. Working over the trace in different directions on the inner and outer surfaces means the trace moves within the wall of the pot differently, resulting in a related, but dissimilar surface effect inside and out. The completed pots are scraped back with metal kidneys then burnished with agate, producing a rich, silky finish that is subtly textured by the inherent graininess of the clay body and the characteristics of some of the oxides used.
Jennifer Lee Speckled coral, haloed olive base
The gallery has provided a comprehensive selection of articles and commentary written about Lee's work and there is a consistency about much of what has been said over time. In nearly all of the articles I read there are references to the relationship between the landscape and Lee's pots. Certainly in pieces such as Speckled coral, haloed olive base 2003, Olive, flashing granite bands, tilted shelf rim 2005 and Olive, flashing sand-band, metallic rim 2005, the lure of landscape comparison is inescapable with their strong horizontal layers of colour and rich earthy tones. Speckled stone, graphite clusters 2005 and Speckled stone, graphite cluster, tilted shelf rim 2006 both have an all over surface of intriguingly three dimensional appearance which resembles very closely the surface of cut granite.
However, in conversation with the artist, it was made clear that the big view of the landscape is far from being a primary inspiration. She has been ambivalent about having so much of the genesis of her work being attributed to inspiration via landscape, but latterly sees this as a dimension of the work brought to it by the viewer. She spoke instead of the macro view of things natural, being drawn to look at things from close proximity. Details like the effects of rust altering surfaces and the joints in stems of bamboo are more intriguing to her than the landscape per sé. Lee is enthusiastic about experiencing being out in the landscape, particularly desert environments. This she attributes in part to her Scottish upbringing, commenting on the smallness of the skies and the contrasting sense of space out in the desert. She also looks to the colours of the desert, enjoying the strong contrasts between land and sky. The idea of holding a sense of a specific idea of a particular landscape in her head as she creates a piece is, however, remote from her creative process.
Consistent with the meticulous investigative methods which inform Lee's technique is the creative process itself. While she used to work on a number of pots simultaneously, she now works on a single pot from conception to completion. It is a slow process, Lee producing only about twenty pots in a single year. Each coil is added, the join worked and dried a little under lamps before the next is added. The insertion of the traces is time consuming, particularly when numbers of them are being worked into the piece. Scraping and burnishing are slow, meditative processes. After each pot is finished, Lee draws them, producing finely finished images that both document each pot and stand alone as fine quality drawings. Six of these works are included in the exhibition, offering a valuable insight into Lee's process. Each pot becomes a stepping-stone to the next, the drawing providing Lee with a different means of evaluation of a completed piece and a sense of progression toward the next. While pieces are photographed for both archival and gallery purposes, Lee prefers the type of looking and seeing of an object demanded by the drawing process as a valuable component of the continuity of her practice.
Also in past commentary has been reference to the, sometimes, calligraphic nature of the decorative surfaces Lee creates. The delicacy of works such as Pale, spiralled haloed traces 2005 and Pale, spiralled granite traces, tilted rim 2005 with their fine, wandering lines of trace oxide bear this out to a degree. There is a sense of the ink-loaded brush perhaps having wandered across the pale surface of the piece. Some of the shapes are reminiscent of Japanese work, the tiny piece Fractionated pale shale 2005 with its finely speckled surface inviting my fingers to curl around its curves as around a tea bowl. I mentioned this to Lee, querying any Japanese influence and was told this was not a direction she had ever pursued. She often finds herself drawn to Japanese ceramics, but doesn't deliberately incorporate either techniques or a Japanese aesthetic into her own work. Interestingly, she mentioned an American collector who holds a number of her pieces alongside a substantial collection of Japanese pieces. This proved to be an interesting element of discussion. In much the way that she feels that the idea of landscape is brought by viewers and critics to her work post-production, we decided that my interest and understanding of Japanese ceramics was perhaps colouring my sense of the work.
In his article from 2003, David Whiting stated:
What is striking about the work is its constancy, the way in which she has been able to explore and fathom the constitution of clay and delineation of form through the endless possibilities of the cylinder and the bowl. Within these self imposed parameters, her journey has, in a sense, moved inward, gauging and regaining the interaction of profile and surface, interior and exterior, volume and lift. 1
Certainly, the overriding sense with which I came away from the exhibition was one of having encountered a degree of resolution in a collection of works that was unusual. Lee's slow, deliberate journey with each pot, the intense attention to detail and the paired down nature of each piece despite the intricacies of production speak volumes about her sense of discipline and dedication to consistency of work practice. The result is work that has a quiet authority, remarkable consistency and yet elegant subtle difference from piece to piece. Each piece will stand alone, but the collective view offered in this exhibition is very impressive. It is to be hoped that a successful season of this collection will encourage Lee to return in years to come as she has done in the United States , as well as her continued exhibitions in London .
References
Whiting, David. 'The Circumnavigation of Form', Ceramics Monthly , October 2003, p 38-41.
