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Winter Resident Profile - Elisavet "Elli" Papatheodorou - 2008 Juried Winter Resident 
Repetition of touch and form compound to construct a larger entity. The evidence of a repeated touch leaves its history on the clay; information of firing, transformation, and atmosphere collects in the surface of the ceramic object. Collections of small details build on each other. They begin to collaborate and fabricate, insinuate and connote. Slowly, systematically, the details multiply, expand, and compound. They organize to form a structure of their own. They grow a meaning of their own and they claim a life of their own. 
The meaning of my work can be found in the history of its making: I start with a system of building objects
or units of a larger structure. I decide on the shapes and surface textures I will use. I decide on a number,
that is, where the project terminates. Then, using my own hands, I perform the motions required to finish each
task. I repeat the motions until I have completed the pre-established number of objects or units.
Repetition is a kind of meditation; it provides a setting for the uplifting to take place. Human touch engenders intimacy, complexity of form and surface, and an understanding of history and time. Structure provides boundaries for ideas to ripen, for details to reveal themselves. In the intimate place between the structure set forth and the meditative touch of my hands, another thing can be found: the sublime. |