Elisa Helland-Hanson was born in 1950 in New York but now resides in Bergen, Norway. Elisa began school at the Trondheim school of art which she attended for two years and then continued her education at the National College of Art and Design in Bergen, Norway and graduated from the ceramics department. She taught at HDK, Gothenburg University in Sweden and has visited Universities, including CU, as a visiting artist where she talked and has done workshops and has been a guest lecturer all over the world. Elisa works with ceramics and her focus for her work is domestic use and how they relationship between their function and form, color and surface, and her biggest challenge still is the works social and cultural context. http://www.kunst.no/elisa/info-eng.html
Elisa had her first of wood firing during a kiln building course at the National College of Art and Design. Her ceramic work is wood fired which she built in her studio after graduating and establishing her own stu
dio. Her decision to work with wood firing was due to the success of the different results. With wood firing the results vary because the ash and different burning technique can add a different texture and color to the glazes. Most of her work is thrown on the wheel and altered after and on her pouring vessels and cups most of her handles are pulled strait from the body of work. When decorating her pots she uses many different techniques such as wax resist, slip and paper stencil, and over glazing. Her body of work has been many different exhibitions all over Europe with a few in the USA.
All of her work is done in a stoneware or porcelain and is meant to be strong and durable so that the pieces can be functional and used in everyday activities. However, her use of the different decorating techniques that she uses on her work makes the aesthetic view of the domestic pieces seem much more delicate and valuable. She describes her work in “Song From My Pot” where each line describes that her work should be used, looked at, enjoyed, filled, touched, and more. Each pot that she makes definitely follows this and each one has a different look and feel and is enjoyable to look at.
I really like her use of darting in the mugs she made. I imagine that those mugs would be comfortable to use because the artist has intentionally created a space for your finger to rest. I also enjoy her use of white inside her forms. This makes these vessels more inviting to be used, rather than if the interiors of the vessels were a dark color.
ReplyDeleteSomething that I admire when observing Elisa's work is that it seems like she uses a variety of different approaches when creating her pottery. Her work appears to be carefully crafted with a clean, precise style. I noticed and enjoyed the different ways in which she altered the forms of her cups. Also, I find it interesting that she strives to incorporate a social and cultural context within her work.
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