(bright music) - Welcome back to "Monograph."

Tonight I visit with sculptor Jennifer Fields of Lit Deer Studios.

We'll also visit a couple of ceramicists from South Alabama.

Stay tuned until the end when I have a special message just for you guys.

But first, come on, let's get our hands dirty.

Hello.

- Hey, Jackie.

Welcome to my studio.

- Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

- Thanks for coming.

- So excited.

So what are we gonna do today?

- So we're going to build a sculpture using hand building and slip casting techniques.

Okay, so the first thing that we're gonna do to start our slip cast is pour slip, which is liquid clay into this mold.

- How did you select your mold?

- So I actually got this from eBay.

It is a doll head named Vicki, which you can see right here on the end.

- Oh, 1992.

- Mm-hmm.

So this is our slip.

And I'm just gonna give it a little stir to make sure that it's ready to go.

Would you like to do the honors?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- [Jackie] I can't wait to build my very own creations with Jennifer.

Let's learn more about Jennifer's sculpting practice.

- I was actually taught how to throw when I was 12 by a farmer with clay that he dug and processed himself.

My earliest influences came in the form of Appalachian craft and folklore and storytelling traditions.

I was raised in north Alabama in the foothills of the mountains and my parents imparted on me appreciation and respect for handmade items as well as a connection and a resourcefulness of materials.

My process involves hand building and slip casting raw clay, which I don't dig myself.

(chuckles) I do purchase that.

And then I either roll it out in a slab or build whatever, you know, object I'm thinking of at the time.

And then I typically combine with elements that I've found from nature or found objects that I've rescued from the thrift stores.

Slip casting is a process where you take a liquid form of clay and pour it into a mold and let it set up.

And then when you open the mold you have the three dimensional form.

And then with hand building, it's building a structure from the clay.

Instead of, say, centering it on a wheel and throwing it, you can either construct it from a pattern like sewing a dress or assembling a kit, or you can use like a coil method.

I mean, things do break, like that just happens.

But a lot of times I will work with those breaks or fractures to turn it into something else.

Because so much of my process is a discovery within itself.

I feel like it's a collaboration with the clay and with my pieces to kind of help them become what they want to be as well.

And so, you know, just like us, just because something's broken doesn't mean that it's over.

Clay body itself actually has memory.

(calm music) As it dries, it kind of sinks back into itself and it gives it like a certain feeling of movement and gravity and weight.

(calm music) The way that folklore and storytelling tradition influenced me was it really awakened a part of me interested in mystery and things that were larger than life.

It also gave me a feeling that there was an underpinning just below the surface.

These threads that kind of bind us all together in ways that we don't often consciously explore.

Universal things that we all experience, like birth and death and decay.

There are so many synthesized boundaries around those experiences that I feel we don't get to fully engage with them.

And it creates distance between not only our own experience but between each other.

In places that we could connect we instead kind of go further apart.

That's actually one of the reasons why I am so drawn to nature.

I feel like when you're in nature, these life cycles and season cycles are always evident and like nothing can be hidden in nature and there's no imaginary boundaries around us.

The way that my altar started is really because I have a love of found objects and that is because of the story that they have to tell within themselves.

There's something magical that happens when you end up putting the right objects together.

They speak to each other and they tell more of an overarching story of some truth or a narrative.

Many times I have found pieces with family photos or handwritten notes tucked inside or dates inscribed on the bottom.

And it just is this question of like, how did this once prized possession become a castaway?

And so I kind of feel in a way that that story and the life of that object needs to be represented or documented.

I remember as a kid going over to my aunt's and my grandmother's houses and just obsessing over certain trinkets or objects that they had.

And eventually some of these items came into my possession, but it didn't quite feel the same.

And I found that by combining several of the objects together or adding, you know, different things to it, I could reignite the luster or the magic that was connected to the nostalgia and memory.

There is definitely an element of whimsy to my work, either visually or sometimes it's through the title.

And I like to keep that element of lightness present for a few reasons.

One is just because if somebody looks at a piece and they laugh or they chuckle, that's great.

I mean, when I make art, I just want people to feel something.

If that's what they take away from it, that's perfectly fine.

But there's also an opportunity to dig a little deeper.

Like if you think that title is funny, what is that?

Is that a poem?

Is it a lyric to a song?

You know, there's always a chance to think about it on another level.

You definitely don't have to, but I feel like keeping a little whimsical nature to it kind of lays that invitation open and makes it more accessible.

(calm music) If I could give advice either to younger me or any younger artists, I would say don't stop.

Like there have been times throughout my career when I questioned whether I was even an artist anymore, but life happens and you just have to keep going and making and it never leaves you, it's always there.

Just whenever you're ready.

(birds chirping) This has been setting up for about 15 minutes and so it should have a shell on the inside but we do wanna get that excess out.

- [Jackie] Are there other like clay classifications?

- You can make a slip out of like any type of clay body that you were working with, but I think just commercially available, stone wear and porcelain are the most popular ones.

- Yeah.

(relaxed music) Wow.

- You wanna hold it?

- Yeah.

- It's very delicate.

- Ooh!

Slip casting, was it, as a technique was it started for objects of utility or was it started for like dolls and, you know, decorative objects?

- I think it was more for the decorative objects.

It's because there was a time when any type of like little tchotchke was more expensive and delicate because everything was made by hand and everything was made from actual porcelain, which would come from China.

And so like the trade in that would be a lot.

And so after things became mass produced, then everybody could have little tchotchkes and doodads in their house.

- Nice.

What do we do now?

- And so here in a little bit after we attach it, we'll clean off all of the seams and everything and then it'll be ready to go.

- And is that the technique that would've, like when Vicki was originally made, do you think?

(both laughing) Do you think she was made a similar way or?

- I do, I do.

I think that she's been reincarnated in this fashion several hundred times probably.

(chuckles) We're gonna start our hand building by rolling out some slabs to start the body of our sculpture.

And so we'll just get some slabs going like this that will assemble into our piece.

Hand building feels like sewing to me because you do use like patterns and you can kind of piece things together and help build them out that way.

- [Jackie] What are the artists that inspire your work?

- Louise Bourgeois is a huge, huge influence.

Everything from her actual work to just her philosophy.

- [Jackie] And you just pull it out after I finish cutting?

- [Jennifer] Yeah, sometimes it's easier to remove the excess.

- [Jackie] Next up, we get down and dirty with some hand building.

I'll help Jennifer get our tools ready.

In the meantime, let's head to Mobile to see new collaborative public works with potter Charles Smith.

- I'd list myself as an artist.

You know, people try to give you these labels, now they coming in telling these folks that they makers and all that.

I'm not a damn maker, I ain't making nothing.

I'm documenting this particular culture that's in my head.

(calm music) My name is Charles Smith and I'm a ceramic artist located in Mobile, Alabama.

Everything's gotta be perfect.

You gotta have the perfect color, you gotta have the perfect balance, you gotta have the perfect shape.

And that shape is normally is a female form.

So you're going into that Afrocentric, I'm celebrating the female.

I had a situation with an organization here in Mobile.

Now I was called and they said they wanted me to do a bicycle rack.

And I said, I don't do bicycle racks.

When they came in for that first walkthrough, which was about maybe three months after, they said, "That's not a bicycle rack."

(chuckles) No, that is not a bicycle rack.

That's where the three sisters come in.

(calm music) It ended up over at the city county building.

Everybody said it was pretty, it was cute, but nobody asked what the story was about.

So I just kept quiet because if I'd have told them that in the beginning it never would've got done.

That it was three queens, three African queens, three sisters of high esteem at the city county building.

Justice symbols from the African's perspective.

When you start looking at the history of the abuse of black women around the world, think about all that enslavement and people being snatched in from the continent.

And mothers looking for their child, and they died looking for their child.

All these ghosts, all these souls that's out there looking for their children just get stuck in my head.

And then you get the Dora, we just took a African Ashanti fertility doll image.

(calm music) And then we did the Bantu knots braids because they used them when they was enslaved.

Those braids was a map.

It would tell you where to go if you need to run.

So when you start looking at it, people start telling the story, then you start doing your own research, you'll see all this.

That's come from a civilized group that knows how to communicate without words.

I paired with Frank, 'cause I'm not a welder.

I had that design hand and knowing how Clay worked and knowing how Frank worked, is that, can we transfer those textures that look of what I do into metal?

(calm music) He amazed me with some things that he could do.

(calm music) Well the significance of this piece is talking about Africatown and their roots from the Benin from Africa.

- Africatown is a settlement in North Mobile County where 32 of the 110 captive slaves from Benin, Dahomey, were brought to the United States.

It's the last known vestige of where a ship was landed.

(calm music) The ship has been found, it validates the historical story that have been told secretly, if you can tell a story secretly.

- We did it in symbols.

So this is more to read into the history of it.

You know, when people can look at it, it don't have to have a direct meaning, but when you just see these symbols and the color variations and the texture, you getting that ancestral spirit.

These are things that you can communicate with.

You start getting into your real African roots that in my case, I'm the artist of the of the state.

That's my job is to record what's going on for the next generation.

My thinking was, how can I get an image in Mobile because they didn't have any black images that I knew of.

The commissioner was Merceria Ludgood, set up this stuff for us to work on these different projects.

(calm music) (calm music continues) Retirement, I thought at one time we was in the cards.

It's just a creative call and you can't get rid of it.

My head is always spinning.

I got a lot to say, but you gotta find the people that's gonna listen - Now that we have all of our pieces cut out in front of us, we can go ahead and start to assemble the body.

- [Jackie] After your first instructor, when you were 12, have you had other kind of mentors in the process?

- Learned a lot from other tutorials of ceramic artists that I see online.

I also try to do a lot of tutorials like on my Instagram page, just because I've learned so much from other people that I like to just kind of share.

And as many different people make ceramics is how many different ways there are to do something.

And some people are strictly about the material and then some people are more about the form and or function.

For a while I focused a lot more on functional pottery, but I just find pleasure in the sculptural aspects.

I've used what they call wild clay, which is where you harvest it yourself, but it's just, it's a lot of work 'cause you gotta get all the sediment out of it and things like that.

- Would it affect once it gets in the kiln and everything?

- Definitely, because there are certain, like I think it's lime is one of the, you know, it's an element that's found in nature but it can cause your ceramics to explode in the kiln 'cause it absorbs too much moisture for the body.

We're gonna put them together like this.

So we'll just have to slip and score these two edges.

And then when you get ready you just kind of put 'em together and then you can tap down on the table to kind of help them stick.

And you can also use one of these paddles to like kind of smooth out the place where you join them together.

- Okay.

(paddles thudding) (both laughing) Take out some frustration.

Have you ever made anything with clay before?

- Oh yeah, I took a- - It shows.

- Yeah.

My professor said I threw breasts, 'cause they were always like lopsided, it was like kind of like a lopsided teardrop, you know?

- Sounds like you should have kept that up.

- (laughs) Well, it's hard to eat out of them.

(both laughing) - [Jennifer] And I think now we are ready to attach our heads.

- Okay, I wanna step back and really decide here.

- Yeah, and because you can also like the way, you know, the way that you attach the head can add a lot of attitude, so you could go to the side or back or down.

- She's kind of leaning so I want to emphasize that further.

- [Jennifer] Okay.

- My girl Vicki.

- Yeah, get it, Vicki.

- Usually when you're in the studio, do you like listen to music or listen to books or?

- I usually listen to music.

I try to listen to books on tape, but sometimes I find that I just start listening to it and I stop moving and I'm just like listening.

So music's better.

- So we'll set these to dry, what are the next steps?

- So after the bisque kiln it'll be ready for glazing and I will apply the glaze and you can glaze it and fire it the same day.

The glaze doesn't have to have like any kind of drying time or anything.

- How's that looking?

- That looks so good.

Are you happy with it?

- I want to spend a hours more on this, literally like I can't express how swept up I've gotten in your process.

But I know we still have to see some more art and talk to a few more folks, so.

- All right.

- [Jackie] I'm so excited to see how my piece turns out.

As Jennifer said, it needs to dry for a while before we can fire it in the kiln.

We've definitely got some cleaning up to do around here.

So while we get to work, check out Fairhope sculptor Kyle Miller.

- My time in the military was pretty stressful.

There was a lot to process from that and ceramics is extremely meditative and helps to really work out those feelings.

Ceramics is a medium that can be pretty harsh.

It teaches you to let go of things.

You unfortunately don't really know whether or not it's gonna be successful until you open the kiln.

All of the work that you put into it kind of culminates in this one moment.

The process with wood firing, it's heating up the pieces by the combustion of wood.

Even the different woods you put in will have a different effect on the color.

And what's really cool is that the wood ash that's released actually acts as like a melting agent for the glass, the glaze essentially, it creates these really interesting effects.

So you can almost have a visual narrative of what's happening on the piece because of wood firing.

It's just, it's kind of magical.

Specifically with atmospheric firing.

Wood firing is something that you generally can't do by yourself.

Shifts can range anywhere between like four hours to eight hours depending on how long the firing is.

So community and clay is one of my favorite parts about ceramics.

Art's a form of communication.

Innately you're gonna have your background story into it just based off the way you pull a piece or the way you work with the clay, with your hands.

My mother was born in Bangkok, Thailand, but I also lived in the US and I'm also queer.

A lot of identity plays into like my everyday experience so when I'm communicating through art, it generally has a way of coming out in a certain effect.

I can't really hide who I am.

Right now I'm exploring the idea of double walls in vessels and how you have walls as a person and what that means to let down your walls or keep them up or different ideas of how to play with that.

(rhythmic music) What I did in the military really shaped who I am now.

I had experiences, especially like in the Middle East, that changed my perception of war or violence and gives me kind of a dual perspective.

Like I've seen what it can do and I also see the after effects that it has on people on both sides.

So, let's face it, like mental health is not something that we openly talk about.

Interactions I had in the military have like brought me extreme shame and like depression and all of those things.

But I think it's important to talk about it and it's important to communicate it.

It's kind of pushed me towards art and hopefully my art can kind of be an outlet for those intersectional conversations between like the military and a queer individual or also like the conservative nature of serving in the military, but the liberal nature of like living in the US where we have these freedoms.

So it's one way for me to kind of walk that line and feel out all this internal stuff.

(soft music) To artists who are going into any field, there is a community for you in the arts.

Like definitely, you have a voice in the arts.

There's people here who will be your mentors, there's people here who will help you learn whatever you wanna learn.

It may be tough to find them, but there is a community who supports your identity and you should pursue whatever you want to pursue and bring the most of yourself to whatever you do.

- Before we close season five, I have one last thing to share.

It's been five great years visiting creatives across the state.

Sadly, this is my last episode as "Monographs" host.

Oh my god!

(laughs) Still, maybe you'll see me again soon.

(calm music) (calm music continues)