ART ON EDGE NOW

Petals and leaves are meticulously carved into clay with a modified dental tool. Like overlapping feathers, the individual shapes lay upon each other, their tiny edges peeking out to sweetly establish their prominence.

The Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum both have acquired Hosono’s works.

FENELLA ELMS

Fenella Elms creates porcelain poetry. Her Edges series tells you just where her passions lie.

“I enjoy working with porcelain clay for its ability to hold intimate details in a state of fragile permanence,” she explains. We see it in her edges. Working the clay into shapes that evoke mushroom and fish gills, scales, ribbons, and 3-D lace, her key forms are all shapes turned on edge.

The edges hit you first, then you melt in further and discover the fine blush of light that glows through the flat sides of each element. Then, you feel the movement of the piece in its entirety.

Elms works with a fluid process, pouring slip onto plaster bats to create sheets of clay, which she then cuts and tears. Once formed, she fires her pieces at around 1280℉ to achieve optimal translucency.

Cracks, anomalies, and blemishes are celebrated, not glazed over. In fact, Elms leaves most surfaces unglazed.

Elms’ works have been on exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London and other fine galleries around the world.

EVA HILD

Swedish artist Eva Hild creates ethereal, flowing ribbons that unfurl and convolute. They sculpt air, conveying the beauty of form and space, strength and fragility, presence and absence.

Their matte white surfaces play up both the shadows and edges of each piece. The strips are all 3-4 mm thick, while their edges are thinned further to emphasize the loopy contours.

While porcelain shows off Hild’s love affair with Beautiful Edges brilliantly, offering strength and tenderness, fragility and resistance at once, she also translates her edge into large scale metal sculptures.

Hild’s work can be found in public and private collections including the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, the Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Japan, the Museum of Contemporary Ceramics, National Museum, Stockholm, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

NORIKO KURESUMI

Sculptor Noriko Kuresumi has never taken a sculpting class. She just fell in love with clay - porcelain, specifically, for its beautiful edge qualities. She uses them to illustrate her memories of the sea, creating abstract pieces that look like sea shells, coral, and other underwater creatures.

WOUTER DAM

Sculptor Wouter Dam gets his edges by throwing pieces on a potters’ wheel, then breaking them apart and reconstructing them in new ways. There are class vase and bowl shapes played against each other, almost in whimsy, but with serious composition genius.

The sculptures are made in stoneware. Soft curves serve up sharp edges, all done in striking color. Together, they look ethereal -- they are mesmerizing.

Dam’s work can be found in collections internationally including the Victoria & Albert, the Museum of Ceramic Art, Hyogo, Gifu, Japan, and Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris.

Read more about Beautiful Edges, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including 10 New Books on the Beauty of Edges Now and New Edges in Space are Beautiful Now and Beautiful Edges to Eat & Drink Now.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Edges in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 03.01.15. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!

IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: Courtesy of Hitomi Hosono. Wisteria bowl.
2. Image: Courtesy of Fenella Elms. Porcelain on African ebony.
3. Image: Courtesy of Hitomi Hosono. Large Feather Leaves Bowl.
4. Image: Courtesy of Hitomi Hosono. Large Feather Leaves Bowl.
5. Image: Courtesy of Hitomi Hosono. Large Feather Leaves Bowl.
6. Image: Courtesy of Fenella Elms. Porcelain on African ebony.
7. Image: Courtesy of Fenella Elms. Work in progress.
8. Image: Courtesy of Fenella Elms. Secrets of Porcelain.
9. Image: Courtesy of Fenella Elms. Porcelain on Charcoal.
10. Image: by Anna Sigge. Courtesy of Eva Hild. Consecutive Working.
11. Image: by Eva Hild. Struktur.
12. Image: by Anna Sigge. Courtesy of Eva Hild. Funnel Loop.
13. Image: by Patrik Johansson. Eva Hild’s Loop 1054.
14. Image: by Shin Ono. Sculpture by Noriko Kuresumi. Sea of Memory.
15. Image: Courtesy of Wouter Dam. Green Sculpture.
16. Image: Courtesy of Wouter Dam. Red Sculpture.
17. Image: Courtesy of Wouter Dam. Purple Sculpture.
18. Image: Courtesy of Wouter Dam. Sculpture.