Deborah Schwartzkopf

Athens, Ohio

It is not surprising to me that I have chosen the path of a potter.  In my home growing up, hand-made objects held special value and were gestures of consideration and love. Because of this, I now enjoy the community that eating together builds, and I find meaning making beautiful serving vessels. Functional pottery holds the common ground of presenting a dwelling place for abstraction of emotion, personal meaning, and relation to environment– as well as living in the kitchen where economy and celebration combine to infuse life with practical beauty. I build porcelain forms whose defining lines and soft planes are geometric and sensual, elegant and animated, and architectural and organic. I merge nature’s placement of hue and the signals employed in human-created environments to imply function, trigger associations, and call for exploration. A signal of red on the humming bird’s throat, brake lights in the night, or a lipstick mark on a glass are starting places for me in a curious game of color placement. I will feel I have reached my goal when my work provokes thought, adds to the sense of discovery and play as it is comfortably used, and communicates my touch and personality. Deborah is a visiting assistant professor in the Ohio University ceramic program in Athens, Ohio.