About Erin McGuiness
An accomplished sculptor whose hand-coiled vessels are in private collections stretching from coast to coast. McGuiness' creative center is in the historic Sawtooth Building in Berkeley California's Artisan District. There you can find dozens of her organic forms emerging from stoneware and porcelain, tenmoku washes, slips and shinos, then fired in the eucalyptus air of the Bayside town. A lifelong artist, who grew up in suburban Virginia spending weekends visiting the Smithsonian museums in nearby Washington, DC. She carries a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Quaker's Earlham College in Indiana. A year long immersion with Pennsylvania potter Dale Huffman preceded her journey to the West Coast in 1998. McGuiness' sculptures were part of Matthew Leverone's award wining design at the 2009 San Francisco Decorators showhome and in the same year also part of Dowling Kimm Studio's room at the Metropolitan Home magazine showhome. Most recently she was featured as an AD Discovery in the January 2011 issue of Architectural Digest.
McGuiness sculptural vessels play with the tension and interrelatedness created by groupings of forms. Each vessel encompasses a feeling or thought and when seen together the tension of multiple viewpoints existing simultaneously is evident. The combinations are conversations sparked by the different emotions that each engenders. Together, they balance the challenge of different perspectives, a visual chorus of ideas interacting.
McGuiness combines throwing and coiling techniques to make her ceramic forms. She enjoys clay most in the moment when a form is made but not yet fired. The clay is full of air and cool to the touch, both alive yet man-made and sculpted. The love of that moment informs her glaze decisions; the work is left raw with glaze washes. The same finish is used for all forms within a grouping and a minimalist approach to the surface is chosen so that the form is prominent and the multiple vessel groupings appear to be from the same "family". Click here to learn more about Erin's inspiration, process and background.
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