jblackett

John Blackett

Favorite Medium: ceramics
Statement: I am an artist who makes ceramic sculptures that can be classified as organic abstractions: curving, undulating lines with shapes that take on biomorphic characteristics. These objects create a visual vocabulary that speak on a subconscious level as well as on a onceptual one. My main concern, though, is the value of our internal imagination and intuition. The different impressions and feelings that my abstractions may invoke are what interest me the most. Like the psychological ink blot tests, these works attempt to provoke hidden or deeply buried images and emotions concerning our fears and horrors about alienation, both personal and cultural. By mimicking nature, and in particular man's gestural characteristics in a reduced fashion, I attempt to find a basic link or pattern or vocabulary for this type of gut-gestural-communication that is also perceived perhaps, or 'understood' somehow, on an unconscious genetic level. My sculptures make allusions to figures yet they are not easily associated with humans. These organic forms are more like some sort of aliens, which I think is a fitting metaphor for artists today in American society. They seem to be lonely outsiders lurking on the fringes of recognition and belonging. Gentle, yet towering shadows of our unknown potentials and hidden personalities.

Awards: May 2003 Lockerbie Award Fourteenth Annual ""CALIFORNIA cLAY cOMPETITION

John Blackett California art ceramics 53 x 32 x 5	John Blackett California art ceramics 49 x 26 x 5
John Blackett California art ceramics 24 x 17 x 14	John Blackett California art ceramics 50 x 25 x 4