kay bazzard
Ceramic Artist
Ph: 06 8771182
Mob: 0211480107 kaybazzard@gmail.com facebook.com/kaybazzardartist www.kaybazzard.co.nz |
I am a freelance writer and figurative sculptor in clay, based in Havelock North, New Zealand.
You may know me as an artist - a sculptor, working mainly on the human form, creating figures in hand-modelled clay, usually from life. You may also know me as a writer - on gardening for the Hawke's Bay Today and as a columnist for BayBuzz, a magazine which focuses on the issues that exercise our thoughts and interests in the Hawke's Bay Region. I hope you enjoy the ceramic figures, the stories and the pictures and that you will give me your feedback, your thoughts and ideas. Typically, I create gestural figures, caught in movement or resting. They represent what I see or imagine may be possible in the range of movement. I delight in dance and exercise. I may colour the figures with subtle oxides or glaszes or finish with the fired clay's own colour. There are 3 factors which drive my art practice - empathy, touch and inspiration. Empathy. My empathy is for the human condition from which I interpret mood, expression, feeling and doing. There is also empathy in muscle memory; knowing how it feels to turn the head, arch the back, curve the spine, the roundness of the abdomen or buttocks. I will test out a pose, noting how it ‘feels’, the physicality of stretching, relaxing, the tensioning of muscles, tendons and joints, which is in turn, translated into the clay. My goal is to capture the body language and energy in mid-movement offering an intuitive understanding of mood and physicality. Inherent in this process is a sense of narcissism, a recognition and validation of the body, spirit and mind of the ‘individual’, unique to herself yet universal to us all. Touch Clay is a tactile medium; it is forgiving of false starts, perfect for manipulation with an intuitive ‘knowing’ that works through my fingers and is observed. The need for touch is an unrecognised and sometimes unfulfilled human need, the feel of skin over muscle and bone - this is translated into a simulation in clay, both in the forming and in the fired ceramic. Inspiration I am always inspired during the early and intuitive shaping of the clay with my fingers, when I register a form taking shape. This engages my interest and at this point I recognise what this figure is going to represent. The experience of life drawing and other artists’ paintings or sculptures are all important sources of inspiration. Underlying this is a lifetime of observation and people watching - the slight distraction that occurs when I am observing or listening to people, their characteristics are subliminally noted and included in my bank of mental images. A smile, their eyes, how their ears sit on their head, to the sheen of the skin as the light catches it. I am not unique, we all instinctively read body language, but for some reason I have a need to interpret it into my ceramic figures. |
