California based sculptor Erin McGuiness incorporates contemplative practices with art making, working primarily with clay and found objects. She uses hand building processes such as carving and coil building, to create ceramic forms that are totemic, archetypal and play at the intersection of dualities; light and dark, monastic and lush, wild and cultivated. The pieces explore themes of the vessel-as-archetype, divine feminine & masculine, inter-relatedness of forms, ancestral recovery of earth based devotional practices and the animation of matter. Researching the Old European Neolithic culture, she seeks to find cultural roots that pre-date colonization and the suppression of artistic and spiritual practices in which her ancestors were deeply tied to the land, nature and one another in shared community. Ultimately the forms and three-dimensional spaces she creates provide a locus or quiet place where viewers are invited into their own personal form of communion. Her artistic philosophy explores the body as our most important tool in art making and the creation of objects made-by-hand, as a nonlinear process to cultivate myth-making capabilities. Integrating meditation, energy and embodiment exercises into the direct manipulation of earth – clay.
Site wide photo credits:
Altarpieces to Her image by Jose Manuel Alorda
Studio in situ images by Alanna Hale, Molly Haas or Katie Swan.
All other images by J. Jones