Sculptor Erin McGuiness explores the vessel as an archetypal form. Playing with the tension and connections created by groupings of forms. Each coil built vessel encompasses symbols, feelings and thoughts and together they form a visual chorus of ideas interacting.
As an artist and resident at the Skopelos Foundation for the Arts in Skopelos Greece, the muse arrived for Erin McGuiness’ body of work, Anadiomeni. These works whisper of truths we know in our bones, the desire to strip away what is temporal, ephemeral and seek core truths. Remnants of what remains after years of exposure to sun, wind, water the weathering of life. McGuiness’ pieces made from clay and found objects feel excavated, discovered rather than built, referencing bone, vertebrae, pelvis, driftwood; objects that are at once part of the natural world and are a world onto themselves. Sculptures as prayers, symbolic records of communion with the source of life. Artifacts that stand testament to her descent into the unknown, void, emptiness, the primordial waters of birth/dealth/rebirth, the fertile muddy ground that all life emerges and returns too.
Upcoming Shows of Anadiomeni Series:
Trio of Altarpieces to Her
De Sousa Hughes
2 Henry Adams Street, #320
San Francisco, CA
Click for more event details
Click here for more information about the series Altarpieces to Her.
Closer Look
Photo credits
Altarpieces to Her/Jose Manuel Alorda
All other images. J. Jones, Molly Haas and Katie Swan
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.
A lifelong artist, who grew up in Virginia, she spent 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 yearlong immersion with Pennsylvania potter Dale Huffman preceded her journey to the West Coast in 1998. McGuiness’ was featured as an AD Discovery in Architectural Digest, named a Style Maker by Luxe Magazine and enjoys coverage in publications including Interiors Magazine, Interior Design Magazine and Traditional Home.