About Ani Kasten

• LOCATED: Shafer, MN
• MATERIALS: Black Stoneware, Porcelain
• SURFACE: Glazes, Oxide Pigments, Slips
• PROCESS: Electric fired to Cone 6

Investigating the materiality of the clay is the foundation and focal point for all of my vessels, sculptures and assemblages. The willfulness, forcefulness, plasticity and mutability of the ceramic medium is a push and pull of contradictions, an endlessly fascinating dance that engages my hands and my imagination on its way to becoming a finished object. These material qualities that I find so expressive and compelling, I have been unable to find in any medium other than clay.

My forms and compositions continually draw from natural and geological imagery and explore the meeting point of phenomena occurring in nature and objects wrought by the human hand. The pieces weave these two points of origin into integrated landscapes, where I look for a balance between the naturally occurring tendencies of the materials, the force of my hands, and my aesthetic vision. I make use of wheel-throwing and hand-building techniques to explore the spectrum, breadth and limits of clay. The interactions and relationships between differing clay bodies, which include black or white stoneware clay, porcelain, and locally sourced ‘wild clays’, as well as various types of stone added for texture, are what interest me, as metaphors for more human interactions and relationships.