James Shrosbree’s recent work is unexpected, un-designed, and “un-art-like.” His ceramic objects have low, lumbering, often ungainly shapes, at times buoyant and swelling, more frequently drooping as if pulled down by gravity. Some works appear clumsy and awkward, their monochrome glazes of unlovely yellows or greens slightly off; others are startlingly erotic in strangely bold reds. It is easy to get lost in the inflections, in the slippery, lustrous surfaces, full of curves and rounded contours. Each work seems to be in flux—not a static mass, but a form caught just as it is turning into representation and meaning. These non-representational objects may be composed of prosaic materials—clay, various fabrics, and even auto body putty—but they resist explanation; even while invoking curiously familiar objects, they do not look like any thing else in existence.
Lenore Metrick-Chen: When did you start using fabric along with clay in your small sculptures? Does it add to the meaning?…see the entire article in the print version of May’s Sculpture magazine.
