Happenings

Behind the Ceramics

October 17th, 2017

musings

The beautiful plates, bowls and mugs that you enjoy using and can purchase at Hovey & Harrison are from Wannamaker Pottery out of New Mexico. Artist Logan Wannamaker makes each piece from the earth’s materials, uniquely highlighting the colors and textures of the southwest landscape.

“I am influenced by the jagged edges of the slick rock canyons, the evolution of sedimentation that makes a cliff band individualistic to its environment or the rays of sun as they set underneath a handful of weathering clouds,” he shares. “I envision the work I create to be like subtle glances while driving a dusty stretch of a New Mexican highway.”

Wannamaker wants the collectors of his work to have a deeper sense of this connection by identifying the color and feel of the surrounding landscape with the color and tones on his pottery.

“The flashing effect enhances the erosive color and patterns predominant in the weathering of an old barn door or the sedimentation of a large slab of sandstone,” he shares. “I feel functional use of my work deepens the compositional awareness of the artwork and helps the user better develop his or her connection to the earth.”

With his work, Wannamaker says he is trying to gather all these elements and balance them into his own canvas — a three dimensional object. In this way, he explains, someone can enjoy the natural landscape from inside their home as they would through a window.

“In a sense, I have tried to take what is beautiful outside and embodied it into an object that belongs inside,” he says. “When someone looks at my work, I want them to make direct relationships to the formations of the land and tones of the sky and metallic rocks lying just outside their front door.”