Grounded In Gold
47 years in the studio and counting… the first 30, joyously spent anchored by function. Eventually stories wanted to be told that pots couldn’t tell. Along the way, story-telling (through figurative sculpture) yielded to questions.
The questions being asked here: Am I one? If so, what’s with the discourse in my head with opposing views? And who is the ‘me’ reporting the experience? So, one vessel splits into 2 or 3 and the apparently separate parts interact.
Living with these questions over the past few years, the work that came through for Grounded in Gold, shifted from figurative to non-representational then back to the figure. The non-representational forms distill while the representational ones elaborate.
Ultimately the process of making the work showed me an alternate path to the endless Self-Improvement-Project. I came to see through process, that it mattered less whether I maintained presence than that I understood that the part of me that is Divine never leaves. It’s there whether I’m aware of it or not. As a human being, I’m always Grounded in Gold and that this is true of every person.
View the Work
Unity
2025
Custom red clay, slip palette and satin glaze formulated by artist, commercial underglaze, and 23 carat gold luster
27 3/4 x 17 1/2 x 18 1/2 inches
price: $10,000
For more information and purchase inquiries, please contact:
Lisa Naples
215-340-0964
lisanaplesceramics@gmail.com
This piece marks an unexpected shift from representational to non-representational in the larger pieces. I had planned to make a larger adaptation of Gestation II but this one wasn’t intended for that direction. It happened early in the process. I was still working out best practices re: proportion and scale. I had set out with a plan to put rabbit heads atop the two figures. They would be in conflict of one sort or another. But the scale of the piece, the thinness of the original slab (1/4”) and the way I was cutting the darts all conspired to find it starting to collapse. Stabilizing it and continuing on meant accepting imperfection here. I took a page from the Japanese art of Kintzugi and celebrated the imperfections by highlighting them in gold instead of repairing and (thereby) hiding them. By doing this, there was an honest visual record of the piece’s history. I didn’t know if the piece would make it through the firings or collapse completely. I chose not to take the time making heads for it and invited myself to complete the piece in the simplest way I could. I was no longer attached to this piece surviving so it became easy to risk it completely which opened my heart and mind to an unchartered, expansive territory.
I tried a few different permutations before settling on the interlocking forms at the top: male and female + concave and convex.
Once this piece was finished I had to take a break from working large bc now there was another direction presenting itself. I wanted to noodle with it. So that’s when I moved back to making studies. Aside from “Study for Tenderness”, all 5 other studies were made next.
The “studies for Integration” were a direct progression from Gestation II (6 years later). And in fact, “Dialectic” was made on the way to making “Integration I and II”. I could see that there was a completeness about it w/out adding another thing. Yet, I was still curious to see how it might communicate differently if I added the very top forms split in half. As I look at them now, I see the amplification of meaning in the final 2. It’s like a human being with their arms raised in the air. It’s an exclamation of sorts.
A friend put it this way: The representational ones come from the Lisa who cares so much about her audience’s comprehension. And the non-representational ones come from the Lisa who just wants to tell the truth and isn’t attached to whether her audience understands.