Artwork Description
Sharon Brush – Safe Passage
Dimensions: 22 x 25 x 6″
Year: 2025
Medium: hand-built stoneware clay with burnished slip
I’ve always had a fascination with beautifully crafted, handmade objects. I remember taking numerous books out of the library as a teenager that focused on pre-industrial, pre-mass production cultures from around the globe. I would pour over the photographs, mesmerized by the beauty of the objects, tools, architecture, clothing, jewelry—all made by the very people using them. I saw how there was immense power in something individually crafted with love, care and deep intention.
I took my first ceramics class when I was 14 years old and continued taking clay classes throughout junior high and high school. Even at that early age I felt a strong connection to the material and the creative process
My fascination with pre-industrial cultures led me to begin college as an Anthropology major, but I soon found that I was spending all my time in the clay studio. I changed my major to Fine Arts and graduated in 1985 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics. Years later I received my Master of fine Arts degree from Rhode Island School of Design in ceramics as well.
I’ve been a professional ceramic artist for 40 years now. A couple of times along the way I’ve experimented with other media, but there’s really no other material that has the versatility of clay. If you develop the skills, you can do anything with it. I go out to my studio every day, still completely excited by the possibilities clay offers me.
In my latest body of work, I use visual metaphor to describe the processes of growth, transformation and the inevitability of change. The pieces appear to have lived a life– and they carry the marks of their experiences. They have twisted, bent, divided and come together as they’ve been altered by the forces they’ve encountered. I work to infuse each piece with rhythm, flow, and reverberation. When finished, I need them to speak to me like a musical composition.