Jill Anderson
TONGUE IN CHEEK
My ceramic animals are playfully confrontational. The viewer is presented with pink fleshy tongues, puckered-up lips and gaping mouths, and is left with a smile on the face, and perhaps a slightly raised eyebrow. My work is a light-hearted dig in the ribs at serious 'Art', and at people's sensibilities about what is 'proper'. There is a cheeky slightly eccentric sensuality with a hint of kitsch.
Giraffes have protruding tongues, chimpanzees offer smooches, and elephants wave sinuous trunks. A lion's tongue lolls between pointed teeth, and a zebra looks you in the eye as it licks its thick black lips. Sensual hippopotami bare gaping pink mouths festooned with crooked teeth, or lie partly submerged, casually observing passers-by. Also present is a shark, a platypus, and echidnas with pointy tongues flicking out the end of pliable snouts.
I usually brew an idea for an animal caricature in my mind for quite some time, until I can visualise it clearly. It is exciting watching my mental image take shape. I like to work with radio national on to occupy my rational mind. Ifnot, it tends to interfere and get overjudgmental and fussy about what I'm making. When given free reign, my creative mind works in a purposeful, serene almost meditative way, forging a direct link between mind's eye and hands.
I work in stages, on a number of sculptures at one time. Using coils 1 build up the basic form, leave it to firm up, then refine the shape and add the details of eyes, ears, tongues etc. The work is then painted with coloured slips, dried very slowly and fired to earthenware temperatures. Various post-firing processes are sometimes employed to complete the sculpture.
The fact that I have a lot of fun making these animals is evident in their cheeky ribaldry. It is a delight to feel new ideas brewing in my mind and a challenge to bring those ideas into the physical world.
