KAREN NORTON - CERAMIC ARTIST
Landscapes and Abstracts in Clay
In the 1970s, I became infatuated with pottery and began a small collection purchased at art festivals and galleries. In 1976, my husband bought me a potter’s wheel and a “How To Book”. Thus began a life long love of clay. I’ve taken many classes and workshops from nationally and internationally recognized ceramic artists.
Over the years I developed craftsmanship in forming shapes, glazing techniques, surface designs and different styles of firing from high-fire reduction and oxidation to low-fire raku and pit-fire. I use a variety of clays, glazes and firing methods to create my hand built landscapes and abstracts. Each piece uniquely offers a blank canvas to apply glazes and create unusual designs. They are organic land, sea and sky scapes that take the viewer to unimagined places where tranquility and vitality merge into cohesive wholeness. Some tell ancient or futuristic stories, others are simply abstracts that evoke emotions, an interplay of order and randomness, that becomes a natural aesthetic in the forces of nature.
My pieces are often named from sights discovered through my travels in Asia, Europe and the Americas as well artistic invention but the viewer can find their own vistas and make their own interpretations to what they see and feel.
