Caitryn Adair
Ceramics
As a contemporary interdisciplinary artist, my current focus resides within the craft of ceramics, a medium that serves as a canvas for my explorations. Drawing serves as the backbone of my creative process, utilizing sketches as blueprints. My work encompasses a diverse range of expressions, from sculptural hand-built ceramics to meticulously crafted wheel-thrown vessels and shattered found-ceramics compositions. Drawing, both digital and traditional, remains integral, intertwining with my ceramic practice as the beginning of concepts. In my latest works, I delve into dual themes accentuating the fusion of sculptural form and functional design, with a particular emphasis on furniture-inspired pieces. My research is centered in large scale ceramic functional objects, and how I can link this theme to both colour and pushing the boundaries of functionality. I use colour in a series of trends, working within a set number of colours that all work together in unique ways, combining tints and tones with bright and deep hues. I challenge notions of functionality by taking standard designs aspects and enhancing them with specificity or pushing them past the threshold of functionality almost to the point where things become non-functional. Drawing inspiration from midcentury furniture aesthetics, I traverse the intersection of ceramics and utilitarism, challenging conventional notions of functionality. I am driven by a curious pursuit of innovation, and I am compelled to push the boundaries of functionality to their breaking point, embracing the paradoxical nature that emerges.
Profile image courtesy Winner Aigbogun
Visualizing Furniture
The theme of this body of work, Visualizing Furniture, is one of creating specific functional furniture, but putting a heavy emphasis on the aesthetic features of the furniture. I have been experimenting with additions of specific functional features, for example, shelving within a chair, cup holders embedded in a side table, specifically sized pockets for small objects, etc. These specific functions combined with the aesthetics of bright colours and abstract forms create a new and innovative space for the furniture to live in, one that prompts more consideration out of viewers of where these objects can exist and how you can use them differently than regular furniture.
