Sara Kagan

Sara Kagan at MudFire

Gallery group show Bay Area Pottery Posse, June 2009

Sara Kagan Artist Statement

I grew up in New York and now live in Oakland, CA.

I make pots inspired from the remains of industry which I started while I was living in Hartford, Connecticut in 2001. As I explored this area I found much of the land abandoned from the industries which preceded me. The remains of that time were left behind and these forms fascinated me with all their rusty surface texture and cold steel frame work.

The teapot has always been one of my main forms. It has always intrigued me with it's individual structural ability to function as well as become an individual work of art. The parts of the teapot make the pot what it is, and I enjoy expanding the visual language of a teapot by creating forms that aren't necessarily for use or to be used. Many of my early forms where grossly oversized and painted with industry caution acrylic paints. My pots were works of art, not functional objects.

My visual language grows and changes as I've moved around the country. I notice softer forms surrounding me when I moved from Connecticut up to rural Keene, New York where I was one of five resident artists at Hurricane Mountain: Center for Earth Arts in 2004. During those 11 months I evolved in a much different, functional direction. I explored the realms of production pottery and solitude. As everything became quieter in my life out of the city and up in the mountains, I developed my glaze palette and a further appreciation for atmospheric surfaces. I headed West to California three years ago without a studio waiting for me or a job. I started a new life in the East Bay in 2006 when I became a founding member of the Firehouse Collective Arts Studio in Berkeley. I've been working in this studio making sense of all that California has brought to my life and into my work. I've been firing in electric kilns for the first time and the core of most of my testing and research has been finding a color pallet at cone 6.

My work has always been about process and play. The steps I take before I work with the material are just as important to me as the mixing of glazes and the firings a piece goes through. If a piece can dance with life when I'm done with it then I've done it! And if it doesn't, I keep working till it does.

I find most of my inspirations from daily life now. I hold onto the solid forms of those pieces from the used factories from Connecticut, but I make cups when my cupboard is empty, and flasks when I want to challenge friends to add more flare to there drinking. Each piece I make has its own visual pleasures as simple smooth forms resembling metal pipes, bolts and threaded screws are assembled together to create playful, useful pottery.