A Malleable Radiance

A Malleable Radiance

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Published in Ceramic Art + Perception No. 121,
December 2023

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Mary McKenzie’s ceramic practice evokes the tension between tenderness and devastation. Her ceramic forms explore the human body through emotive gestures, standing in contemplation or bowed in grief, poses evoking deep emotion. Transforming into vessels in her recent work, the essence of figurative emotional evocation explores grief and transformation. McKenzie’s work is an intimate exploration, transcending the boundaries of form into an exploration of the vibrancy of scale, surface, and materials. McKenzie’s work, rather than holding space, makes space for grief and healing, gestures of intimate tragedy evocative in the mark-making that suffuse the surface of her vessel forms. From her viscous globular glazes, human scale vessels that are intimately tied to an embrace, and riot of colour and textures in her ceramic and textile vessels, McKenzie’s works are part of a longer thread of her career and practice, exploring the personal and domestic infused with the possibility of transformation.

Intimacy of scale

In her “Unreliable Narrator” (2011-2013) series, McKenzie explored domestic intimacies through clothing, her explorations in clay are filtered through domestic objects, dipped in clay and fired so the interior essence of yarn or a woven shirt is burned away in the kiln, a hollow ceramic facsimile remains, more fragile than the original textile garment. Departed (2013) is an assemblage of household textiles that are arranged in the remnants of a domestic space, an armchair draped in folded laundry, other clothing strewn throughout the splintered wreckage of a home. The tension between the domestic and the aftermath of violence resonates throughout the work. Evening Shift (2012), a textile garment dipped in clay and fired, the original material burned away, only the hardened clay remaining, a hollow, fragile form that evokes the memory of the person who once wore the garment, retains the wear marks a physical history of the wearer. Their memory remains in an object that once embraced them, echoed in its human scale, empty, a shroud. Ceramics form the shells of once well-loved garments, in the same way as the remnant ceramic garments are the remnants of the people that once occupied the space. The explorations between positive and negative space, in how people understand the two, was a foundation for McKenzie’s most recent work, her “Metamorphosis” series on view at the Gardiner museum atrium and shop from October 2022 to January 2023. Exploring the metamorphosis of butterflies and moths, where caterpillars dissolve in their cocoons and construct a new self, McKenzie’s vessel forms echo her previous series. The vessels are hollow, holding the spirit of the person absent. The “Cocoon” (2022) vessels, made of low fire red clay, speak to a rawness of emotion, built in clay, the surfaces marked with hatches, as if clawed in grief. The first vessel forms made by McKenzie after the death of her son, are also intimately scaled. Their size and bent, voluminous shapes recall a human torso, as if awaiting an embrace. Each a vessel with a lid, made to hold the spirit for a short while, a doorway and a place of rest. The reference to a domestic interior through the vessel form, juxtaposed with its scale and ties to human connection are McKenzie’s connection to her past work and when seen through the lens of personal tragedy they become gestures of love and generosity, holding space for those absent. 

Survival Strategies

In the grief of a global pandemic and the loss of her son, McKenzie destroyed many of the works in her studio, vessels and forms fragmented into shards. Her shards begin from the paralyzing chasm of grief in personal tragedy, to explorations in materials and making that shaped the way to a process of healing. McKenzie later used the shards as gestures of grief, and points of transformation. The shards of former vessels transformed into pain shapes, curved and jagged landscapes in which borax and ceramic figures bowed and writhed in grief. Invocation (2022) is a small ceramic figure with a reticulated glaze, precariously perched on an assemblage of shards, pierced by wire, a plea into the universe for care. Contrasted with the ephemeral nature of the borax crystal figures of Chrysalis (2022) and Emerging (2022), they occupy the remnants of a landscape shaped by grief, dissolving in humidity, showing the transient nature of time and how grief can change us. McKenzie’s previous “Adaptations: Gestures for Survival” (2010) series showed maladaptive humanoid figures with animal heads or ceramic shards as a helmet, armour against the world. The vessels in “Metamorphosis” adapt in a different way, not through armour but in leaning into the difficult emotions, by working through grief to its core, that of love. “What is grief if not love persevering”, McKenzie’s ceramic work interrogates grief to arrive at a way through, in holding space through tenderness. 

I hold

your floating face

your exploding heart

trip wired to mine

- from Navigating We by Mary McKenzie

The tableau of the Cocoon vessels, with Within Search for Centre (2022) and the female figures of Emerging and Reconciling Fragments, all looking down in contemplation, standing or reclining on fragments of vessels, seem to stand guard or hold a wake for the spirit of the Cocoon vessels. The female figures are not bowed in grief like that of Invocation, but serve as a visual signal of mourning, their ephemeral borax crystal shells the fragile armour of grief. Their collective presence a wake, and also an acceptance, the figures from different pieces stand guarded but connected. Once their crystalline exterior melts, what fragile being will remain? The works are organized as a call and response, a link between the shattered fragments of grief and the later vessels rising above, not only in scale but in spirit, uniting the clay works into a series of evolving gestures, from figurative to abstract mark-making on the surface of Cocoon vessels, whose exteriors also bear the painterly white glaze across their striations, as if embraced by it. The transformative aspect of McKenzie’s figures evolve into her “Metomorphosis” series of cocoons now as experimental vessels of cloth, whose temporality is not fixed.

Small Joys and Ceramic Wonders 

McKenzie’s explorations in clay come with embracing possibility, she’s ready to make mistakes, learn from them, and try again. This resiliency in her practice was tested after a head injury stalled her practice when she could no longer conceptualize 3D objects. This return to a beginner’s mindset, after an active career in ceramics for almost 10 years, beginning anew allowed the release of preconceptions to an approach, and her work shifted from highly representational to working with clay in a different way. McKenzie’s understanding of the medium shifted to be something more malleable, exploring the possibilities of the medium in new ways. Working with slip and glaze and clay’s malleability, McKenzie’s forms shifted from representational solid objects to a play with space and possibility. Clay folded and moved like fabric in her hands, ribbons folding over and holding on to their voluminous vibrancy, not crushed under their own weight in the drying process. 6th Instar - Change Within (2022) uses clay as textile ribbons, building a vessel form that shows an interplay between positive and negative space, whole and hollow. Extending to Moonlight Flowering (2022) and Metabolous (2022) show the transformation from grief to love, to the joy of love in an exuberant exaltation of colour and textile flounce. From a figurative foundation, the vessel is crowned with raw-edged ribbons of textiles, Moonlight Flowering a bright blue tower that holds the lid of the vessel beneath, counterbalanced with the weight of the clay and holding the spirit, with the ribbons above an exaltation of joy. Working with the clay surface, McKenzie’s mark-making serves as the human gesture of the form, the striations patterning the surface articulate an asymmetrical, organic form, as if plied and built over a long period: clay transformed by human hands. The solidity of the clay is broken by the dripped, watered glaze that runs over the surface, emphasizing the shaped and dimpled clay, built in layers to give depth to the solid form. The impression of organic life, the clay surface visually undulating with life, bursting forth in the froth of ribbon above as a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, shows a profound joy in making. McKenzie’s vessels continue to hold their solid foundation, but now also show the joy and exuberance for life of the series, following the transformation of life from one stage to the next. Love becomes a reparative force, transformed in the act of living, through anger and grief to new joys, the vessels show their history in their foundation, and become transformed through the emotion. 

A Malleable Radiance

The poem “Radiance” captures McKenzie’s approach to the series, the words flowing as delicately as her drip and globular glazes over her vessels. The tension between its painterly gesture, transformed by fire and encased, forever merged to the vessel mid-movement. “How light pulls form from shadow” speaks to the forms of McKenzie’s works, their cascade of surface treatments and muted colours moving towards brighter expressions in her later works. The vessel Radiance (2022) is handbuilt, the marks of fingerprints form the grooves of its base, working upwards into a rock-like vessel, the rough texture adding to the physicality of its making. The visual weight of the ceramic vessel contrasts with the airy white tulle cloud of the top, the vessel a landscape bridged by the viscous and dripped glaze in white and light blue, as if a pool of water over a mountain. By raising the tulle, a suspended clay figure emerges, holding the tulle with its weight to the interior of the vessel. Radiance is a culmination of transformative forms, their contrasts creating a dialogue between seemingly disparate materials to create a narrative whole. Making space for grief and loss, the figure floats within the enclosed safety of the vessel, the tenderness of memory, grounding the tulle as an expression of love, the tulle an exuberant expression of joy as a healing gesture. 

As our social moment is turned towards grief and mourning, Mary McKenzie’s work makes space for small joys and abundances, transforming grief through tenderness into love and joy. Her clay vessels and shards hold grief and mourning, but are also expressions of healing. Clay’s malleability is shaped and hewn and transformed in McKenzie’s hands to be more than figures and shapes, also extending outward to be evocative emotional gestures, transcending the boundaries of form, imbued with joy and possibility.  

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This article was published:

https://www.mansfieldceramics.com/issue/ceramics-art-perception-121/