Barbara Frey

Twenty-Two Ways of Clay
A National Ceramics Invitational
Curated by Gary C. Hatcher
October 26th, 2001-January 8th, 2002
The Meadows Gallery
Cowan Fine & Performing Arts Center
The University of Texas at Tyler
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Barbara Frey - Artist Statement

For some time I have been exploring the fusion of a recognizable form (the boat) with the formal vocabulary of the teapot. In the most recent teapots of the "Let's Go" series, the boat/teapots and the bases they are attached to are assembled from porcelain stones I have made in homage to the beautiful rounded stones which I have long admired and collected from the shores of Lake Ontario.

In their formal purity, I consider these lake stones to be naturally formed sculptures. They exist as discrete forms, differentiated and removed from their raw material source by processes and time. I have used these forms to establish another starting point, another kind of raw material, adding this element to the boat/teapot fusion. The piles of stones which function as the bases allude to the "natural" condition of these stones, randomly associated and stacked together whereas the stones which form the boat/teapots have been deliberately selected to create the boat form, handle, spout, and lid.