Karen Massaro

For me the sensory experience of looking and touching ceramic objects intertwines with the words they suggest. I use ceramics, an integration of form and surface in space, to pose questions about placement, movement and perception. I make poems for the eye and the hand. Composite arrangements of forms support fired layers of color. Most of my works have remained intimate in scale, and nod to the tactile and visual potential of clay surfaces. My ceramic work continues to display geometries influenced by organic possibilities natural to ceramics. Surfaces on sculptures and utilitarian pieces began as line drawings in wet thrown porcelain during the 1970’s. Color and value further differentiate real and implied space. Surface patterns, visual trails left by repetitive hand motions, lead the eye over shadows and enveloped spaces.