2024 Culinary and Ceramic Experience – Connie Norman
My work deals with my inner dialogue that I constantly have with myself. My vessels are inspired by stories from my life, snippets of conversation, and memories that I repeat in my head over and over again. I am fascinated by the rhythmic qualities created by color, texture, and patterns. Decoration and the act of decorating are essential because it celebrates and enhances form and speaks purely of aesthetics. I use pottery as a vehicle to explore decoration and other formal questions. It allows me to investigate form, space and design.
I balance text as pattern with mantra in addition to abstract passages of color and line. The text in my pieces acts on several levels, it offers texture in both surface and content. The text often states just enough information, so the viewer can extrapolate their own story.
My thoughts have been focused on the landscape I have come to appreciate, through time and memory, I try to capture the quietude of the land and the memories embedded in vernacular architecture.
All my life I have struggled with writing, now my work is completely covered in text. I have faced fears through the medium of art. An interesting adventure in self-discovery!
Biography
Connie Norman is known for her painstakingly and beautiful pottery. Armed with pieces of movable type she presses each letter individually into the clay. She constructs each
piece with a combination of handbuilt techniques, including slab building, coiling, and press and slump molding. Norman’s glazing process continues the meticulous process by cutting out each design from masking tape and vinyl.
Norman’s work has been shown internationally and has been published in several publications including Ceramics Monthly, 500 Vases, Pottery Making Illustrated, and Surface, glaze and Form. She is also a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Fellowship recipient, and she received a Wyoming Art Council Visual Art Fellowship. She is a graduate of the New York State of Ceramics at Alfred University.
