Andrea Brown

Functional pottery comes from a primal place: the need to eat, drink and commune with the cosmos. I love the humility of the soup bowl, drinking vessel, storage container; not reaching too far, keeping the body and soul going. Then, art can thrive.

I chose the form for this bowl, one in a series, with the glaze technique in mind--the pouring of three different glazes--hence the low profile and absence of articulated rim. I love the way the first glaze, Shino, creates an initial “landscape” for the other glazes to break on, creating rivers, creeks, deltas and rivulets of intermixed color and sheen. The form and process unify, for me, in a functional object that uses and reflects the elements and processed of nature; earth, water, fire and air interacting and changing each other.