Birds
and Their Pets, 11 in. (28 cm) in height, terra cotta slab
with brushed terra sigillata, fired multiple times to Cone
03.
| 
Oui
General, 6 in. (15 cm) in height, terra-cotta slab, allowed
to dry
completely between sheets of gypsum wallboard, brushed with terra
sigillata and fired multiple times to Cone
03.
| 
Horse,
12 in. (30 cm) in height, handbuilt terra-cotta with brushed terra
sigillata, fired multiple times to Cone
03.
| 
Plate, 6 in.
(15 cm) in diameter, hand-rolled terra-cotta slab formed over a mold,
then
brushed with underglazes, bisque fired, then finished with a commercial
clear
glaze.
| 
Plate, 6 in. (15 cm) in
diameter, hand-rolled terra-cotta slab formed over a mold, then
brushed with underglazes, bisque fired, then finished with a commercial
clear
glaze.
|
| Jenny Mendes:
From Center to
Surface
by Katey
Schultz
“Sometimes
I pose a question to myself before I begin to work,” says ceramist
Jenny Mendes. “But it’s not a word question. I really work prior to
language. It’s as though I perceive myself as a little dot in the
center of a piece—even before I’ve physically started it—and I have to
find my way out of it toward something that feels essentially honest.”
In order to find her way out, Mendes paints with terra sigillata in
layers over terra cotta clay, until the narrative has emerged. “It all
comes to a result in the end, but my body has to tell the story and
that comes through my hands. It’s a different kind of intelligence, but
it’s not something I can control.” Thus far, the story Mendes’ work
narrates is at once anthropomorphic and mythological.
Originally
from Ohio, she earned her B.F.A. from Washington University in St.
Louis, Missouri, and has supported herself as a full-time studio artist
since the mid 1990s. Mendes received three Ohio Arts Council Individual
Artist Fellowships and recently completed a three-year residency at
Penland School of Crafts.
She finds inspiration in
many painting
styles, particularly Indian miniature paintings, the work of Australian
Aboriginal artist Emily Kngwarreye and folk art. Likewise, a memorable
sound byte from the radio, a gesture captured in photography, or even
images from pop culture magazines may all blend together to pique her
interest. Her hobby as a gardener also feeds her creative spirit.
Recently, Mendes started reading M.C. Richards’ famous book, Centering:
In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person at the suggestion of mentor and
friend Paulus Berensohn.
“Art creates a bridge
between being and
embodiment,” wrote Richards, whose philosophy aligns the universal
whole with the individual through a dynamic process called centering.
As a poet and potter, Richards deciphered a new mysticism that
encapsulated not just an artist’s approach to her work, but more
importantly, a human being’s moral and spiritual obligation to society
and, ultimately, the greater whole. Easier said than done, but spend an
afternoon with Mendes and the work of centering feels undeniably
present.
Her sculpted figures are handbuilt using
coils, and
plates are cut from a slab laid over her grandmother’s heirloom plate.
Small bowls are pinched and tiles are rolled out by hand, measured and
cut uniformly according to the demands of the project. But it is the
paintings on the surface of these plates, bowls and tiles that so
clearly originate from the same psychological landscape and imagined
community. Seen as a whole, the paintings construct a language of
personal imagery that marks Mendes’ work through and through. But if
this work is the bridge that brings Mendes’ nature, or being, into the
world, what dialogs occur between the clay and the paintings that allow
her to be embodied as such? If surface design is the primary narrator
in Mendes’ work, why not paint on canvas? In short, why
clay?
“There’s
something about the material,” says Mendes. “Working with a malleable
material like clay puts me in more direct touch with my subconscious. I
can be a conduit and that’s how I like to work. The separation between
the self and the material disappears. Because of clay’s softness, I can
find things that I didn’t know were there.”
This sentiment
echoes
Richards, who wrote: “If we surrender our consciousness to experience,
our thoughts may then come directly from a living source…. Perhaps this
is why…we become joyful and active as we respond to the formative
forces in the materials in our crafts: their potentialities call forth
our own, and…we discover our own inner vision by bodying them forth.”
For
Mendes, clay feels inherently forgiving. While she did experiment with
printmaking and painting in college, she had never been asked to paint
her own landscape before. Then a friend suggested she paint on clay
tiles. “I think clay was the most accepting material I ever worked
with. It feels like there’s a lot more life to it and maybe that’s
because it’s a living material. It gives and takes and I like how my
fingerprints can be left in it and I don’t really have to cover that
up.”
Mendes’ serial work on plates and bowls adds
another
voice to the dialog. First, the clay provides the form and foundation
of potential, the place in which the realized ideas are rooted. The
paintings provide a direct link between the being, or artist, and the
form; a sort of narrating medium that expresses the inexpressible.
Finally, the repetitive nature of a series provides the voice of
challenge by beginning with a set of boundaries and ending when those
boundaries have been stretched to their
limits.
“After each
plate or bowl, I always ask myself ‘What if? What if? What if?’” says
Mendes. Limiting herself to perhaps two or three colors painted over
twenty-five to thirty bowls or plates that are equal in size, Mendes
decorates the borders of each form first, creating a literal and
figurative boundary for the stories that will emerge from the center of
each piece. Next, she paints the central story of each piece, often
around a loosely imagined theme such as love, loss, androgyny or
figures caught in a moment of play or dream.
“The smallest
things
make people happy. I understand a lot more about how my work affects
people when I see the relationship they make with it,” says Mendes.
“Sometimes people can be loving and expressive with their animals in a
way that they can’t or won’t be with other people, for example. Some of
my work taps into that animal need that people have, and I see them
relate to it in interesting ways.”
While Mendes’
tiles often
make use of up to 150 colors, the brightness of the black and white
glazes on her serial work commands a different kind of attention from
the viewer. It is as though the distraction of a large palette of
colors has been removed in service of delivering a clearer message. The
borders keep us trapped in the narrative and the limited colors help us
refine our attention. “The repetitive work I do is a long meditation,
as I usually work on the painting part for at least a week straight,
sometimes longer, maybe a month. It becomes a pleasant obsession I
can’t stop until I’ve painted each prepared piece in the
series.”
The
end result is a deeper narrative in which the artist and the art are in
constant play, fluctuating between maker and made. Literally, the
artist has shaped and formed the art, yet figuratively, the art has
made the artist who she is, and we can see now what Richards meant when
she wrote, “Art creates a bridge between being and embodiment.”
“When
I focus on a process that is the same thing over and over,” says
Mendes, “I think I can get into a deeper internal space, a
less-self-conscious state that I really enjoy. It is a state of mind.
The trick is learning to stay in it, to carry an artistic awareness in
walking through the world, in conversation, in making drawing marks, in
experiencing the body, in having friends, in understanding the nature
of growth in plants (my hobby), in understanding
oneself.”
The
scale of this work is intimate, yet the implications carry meaning in
the public forum. The artist working from a less-self-conscious state
comes to know herself more holistically, and within this paradox lays a
greater teaching: The artist who knows herself can release that self
into a broader life force, a place where subject and material merge, a
place where community can arise, a place where the only work to be done
is the work of centering.
Mendes’ work can
be seen in
galleries, fine craft shows and private collections across the country.
She has solo exhibitions in 2008 at the Sherrie Gallerie in Columbus,
Ohio, and AKAR Design in Iowa City, Iowa. To learn more, visit www.jennymendes.com or
see her collaborative work in jewelry at www.bijougraphique.com/freshie.htm.
the author
Katey
Schultz, writes from her home in Fork Mountain, North Carolina. Her
current projects include a series of essays about artists, and her
thesis for graduation from Pacific University’s low-residency M.F.A. in
Writing Program. To learn more, visit katey.schultz.googlepages.com.
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