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For our first exhibition of the year, we are pleased to
present "Paisley Monuments" the monumental new ceramic sculpture by D.C. artist
Tamara Laird. An accomplished professional artist, RISD grad, and ceramics
professor at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Laird draws on her
extensive world travels to inform her
art.
While still a young ceramic
student, she traveled to England to meet the world famous Bernard Leach and
other British ceramists. Then in 1982, while visiting Zaire, Laird
developed a number of illustrated training guides for use in the Peace Corps.
In 1984 she moved to Nairobi, Kenya where she worked at the National Museums of
Kenya on a project funded by the United Nations and she also taught art at the
Kenyatta University. Her next destination was Bangkok, Thailand with her
family, where she carried out extensive research in local ceramics including
individual artists, traditional village production, and full-scale industrial
ceramics factories. She was invited to participate in an educational tour
for traditional northeastern Thai ceramics, sponsored by the Thai government.
She participated in a similar tour of Mexican factories that integrate
traditional and contemporary industrial majolica production. Majolica was
her focus while in Deruta Italy at the Grazia Majolica Artistiche Artigianali
factory as well. It is not surprising that she is an overseas study
coordinator for the Corcoran College's study abroad program in Amalfi Italy,
where she teaches majolica
techniques.
Laird is interested in finding
the connection between local culture and artistic development. Her current
work is based on the paisley motif, a universally recognizable pattern that has
been used for thousands of year. The form makes reference to botanical
imagery, water, fruit, and fecundity. Usually applied to textiles, the
shape is transformed into an elegant yet whimsical and expressive
three-dimensional form in Laird's hands - resembling a plant shoot.
Fittingly, her work was included in the show at the U.S. Botanical Gardens,
"Flora: Growing Inspirations", where they were placed outdoors in the gardens.
The artist makes the sculptures in high-fire stoneware with various glazed
surfaces from flat black to reflective metallic lusters demonstrating the
material possibilities inherent in clay, a material essential to human
development as she discovered first hand all over the world. "I have
paired this essential element with a universal symbol to create a monument to
ornament", says
Laird.
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