Amy Schusser lets her imagination flow as she carves her clay vessels with spontaneous illustrations
Published in The New Bedford Standard-Times on March 23, 2007
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070323/LIFE/703230308
Ceramic artist Amy Schusser of New Bedford is intrigued
by the evolving texture of clay. Ms. Schusser, 51, approaches the medium in a
number of ways, carving whimsical line drawings into the surface of clay
vessels or fashioning intricate miniature clay chairs. But always there is the
"mind trip" of starting with a damp, squishy material that hardens
into brittle, bone-like forms and can be glazed to a lustrous gloss.
As a child growing up in Westchester
County, N.Y., Ms. Schusser pored over her parents' issues of National
Geographic magazine, fascinated by the photographs of other cultures. She also
dabbled in crafts like crocheting, influenced by her creative mother who made
elaborate holiday decorations, greeting cards and cakes. She was 14 when a chance experience
foreshadowed her future working process as an artist. She was looking at a
piece of wood when she suddenly recognized the details of a landscape within
the grain. This vision revealed to her the exact location of the hills, the
clouds and the sun. She still works this way, first envisioning faces and
figures on the surface of her clay pieces and then drawing or sculpting these
images onto the forms.
Studying anthropology and sociology at
Johnson State College in Johnson, Vt., Ms. Schusser took a pottery class during
her freshman year and became hooked on clay. She discovered a new world in the
studio, with a congenial group of fellow art students and a chance for creative
expression available to her 24 hours a day. She also studied drawing during her
senior year, appreciating how the experience broadened her observational
skills. After earning her bachelor's degree in
anthropology and teaching ceramics at the University of Vermont, Ms. Schusser
began a series of moves around the country, each location a progressive step in
her development as an artist.
She first moved to California, where
she worked as a slide curator at Cabrillo College and studied art history. She
also took courses at San Jose State College to develop a portfolio of work in
anticipation of entering a master's program. She then attended graduate school at
Ohio State University. Here the imagery in her work included wheels, birds and
butterflies, based on themes of metamorphosis and transformation. Her master's
thesis, completed in 1992, included 5-foot suspended ceramic hoops and
wing-like forms that cast dramatic shadows against the wall.
Next Ms. Schusser moved to Maine to
work at the Watershed Center for the Arts, where she created large-scale unfired
installation pieces that were primarily of clay but also included symbolic
objects like candles and slices of bread, arranged in repeating structures.
These works were temporary and site-specific, with a focus on creation rather
than the finished product. Ms. Schusser enjoyed the fleeting quality of these
"statements of impermanence," the sense that they would eventually
exist only in memory and photographs. Building the forms and then destroying
them, she had the chance to "play with the rawness of what clay does and
then say good-bye" to the work.
It was in Maine that Ms. Schusser
discovered a subject and format that she would return to for years to come. She
was creating a piece that recalled a past relationship; her former boyfriend
had been a cellist, and she was impressed with the memory of him practicing
alone in a room, empty except for him seated in a chair with his cello. She
built a cello of clay, then fashioned a tiny clay chair, about 3 inches high,
to be placed in the sound box of the instrument. Her intention was for the
sound box to be reminiscent of the bare practice room.
A friend who owned a local gallery
visited Ms. Schusser's studio one day and saw the miniature chair sitting
alone. Intrigued by the strong impact of such a small form, she suggested that
the artist make more of these chairs for sale in her gallery. Ms. Schusser
created seven more little chairs, then her studio-mate saw them and bought them
all. Thus began an ongoing series of diminutive chairs that have remained popular
with art collectors over the years.
It is the scale of the chairs that
attracts people, Ms. Schusser says, as well as their distinctive details. Each
one has a unique design and combination of colors, including abstract or
realistic elements and often incorporating found objects such as beads or
trinkets. The artist thinks of the chair form as a "stage" for her
"props." In addition to the tiny chairs, she has created a series of
10 life-size clay chairs in the same fanciful style. In 2000, Ms. Schusser moved to New
Bedford to accept an artist's residency and to start up the clay program at
Artworks! on Dover Street.
Her latest project is a series of
large hand-built vessels with colorful vignettes carved along their sides from
top to bottom. In these pieces, Ms. Schusser says, the vessel forms are
secondary; it is the quirky, brightly colored pictures that are of primary
interest to her. These images are drawn spontaneously onto the vessels without
planning, and here the artist pours out the details of her daily experiences
and nightly dreams.
Like the experience of seeing a
landscape in the wood grain when she was a teenager, Ms. Schusser says she sees
the images on the clay as she carves them. These include faces, figures and
animals — cats, dogs, monkeys, birds and snakes — rendered in glazes of greens,
blues and earth tones and outlined in black. In their directness of line and
spirit of honesty, the drawings reveal her interest in Outsider art — works by
self-taught or folk artists — and her role as a children's art teacher. "These vessels satisfy my love
for imagery and my love for drawing," Ms. Schusser says. They involve all
of her favorite artistic tools and practices — line, color, drawing, carving,
hand-building, story-telling and plumbing the imagination.
Teaching art is central to Ms.
Schusser's life. She teaches classes in wheel-throwing, hand-building, tiles,
mosaics and masks to adults, teens and children at Artworks! and the South
Coast Learning Network in New Bedford and at the New England Craft Program in
Williamsburg, Mass. A member of the Massachusetts Cultural
Council's Creative Teaching Partners Program, she has developed workshops on
the Japanese tea ceremony and on symbolism in Renaissance art. She will be
presenting these classes to elementary schools in New Bedford and in Boxboro
this spring.
Ms. Schusser's artwork has involved
major shifts in scale, from palm-of-your-hand size to 8-feet long and back
again, often dictated by the dimensions of the kiln and the size of the studio
available to her at various locations. The constant elements in her work have
been her love for drawing and her search for new forms. After 30 years on the
move, she seems to have found her home among New Bedford's artist community,
where she has established a creative niche and earned a reputation as a
much-respected teacher.
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