Properties of Layers

Artists

• Bean Finneran

Statement

Bean Finneran
Properties of Layers

I’ve spent many years of working with a single elemental shape, a handrolled curve of low fire clay that was assembled by the hundreds into temporary sculptures built on site. This year, I have been exploring the properties of clay in its liquid state, sopping wet mushy state, dry fractured state, soft state, frozen state.

Some sculptures are assembled by beginning with nearly liquid clay adding layers over multiple days building up the form that is then covered with multiple layers of liquid porcelain slip which softens and binds the individual bits of clay together. Some sculptures are created by throwing soft clay down from a ladder and letting gravity choose the form. Other sculptures developed from tossing and layering old dry clay into large container, adding water, and letting the sun dry, crack, and fracture the clay over weeks. My only intervention is to choose pieces, to notice the natural beauty of the lines and cracks in the chunks of clay once it has dried and cracked.

Layering continues in the process of adding color to the pieces since they go through multiple firings and coats of underglaze and glaze. Like the work I’ve always done this new work involves color, bright and subtle and is abstract and deeply connected to the natural world.