Artist: Rekha Srinivasan
Bio
Rekha Srinivasan is a functional potter currently based in Chicago. After working in finance for more than a decade, she found her passion for ceramics while training under both traditional folk and studio potters, first in Dharavi, Mumbai and later at the Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry, India.
Rekha works out of the Midwest Clay Guild, a ceramics co-op based in Skokie, IL and works mostly with high-fired stoneware clay. While she loves the effects that atmospheric firing with wood brings to her wheel thrown and handbuilt work, it’s the community that builds around this method of firing that she finds most satisfying.
Having been lucky enough to have grown up in India, and to have lived in the United States, Europe, and Asia, the conscious and subconscious influences of her varied cultural exposure informs her aesthetic. She strives to make quiet, gentle pots that are comfortable to use in a modern setting.
Artist Statement
The ability to make objects of everyday utility draws me to be a maker. The humility of clay as a material draws me to be a potter.
My life-long love affair with the spirit of pottery made by the countless, nameless terracotta folk-potters of India has informed my value system as an artist. The unassuming love of material permeates the quiet gentle forms I make. Values of practicality and service are in my background and upbringing, and are expressed in the objects I make.
As I reflect on the way bright and rich colour plays across the objects of my childhood memories, I feel a tension between humility and adornment. My current work is an exploration of how these two things can intertwine: modesty and reserve versus boldness and drama. Using both high temperature wood- and soda-firing and low-fire processes I am developing and discovering how to think about that complex relationship.
The theater of atmospherically-fired surface appeals to the dramatic aspects of what I seek in my art. The wide variation in colour and the visual evidence of dynamic flame, ash- and soda-path on the clay surface as it traverses the kiln, coexist with the restrained forms.
Bright colour is such a fundamental part of everyday life in India: from our fabrics to our houses, from our rituals to our food, there is hardly anything more quintessentially Indian than colour. Through electric firing and lower temperature ranges I have recently started incorporating coloured surfaces on my work, attempting to mimic the effect of peeling paint on weathered wooden and metal surfaces.
Achieving these aged, worn, and tarnished surfaces feels true and honest to who I am and allows me to create objects of beauty without pretense. They speak of beauty changed with use and time: form and surface adornment uniting to speak of everyday objects that are valued and loved.
Education
2024 Clay Cohorts: year-long artistic development program, as mentee of Simon Levin
2023 Shino-fest wood-firing workshop with Linda Christianson, River Song Pottery, Plano, Illinois
2023 Clay Cohorts: year-long artistic development program, as mentee of Simon Levin
2022 Wood-firing workshop with Simon Levin, River Song Pottery, Plano, Illinois
2017 Soda-firing workshop with Ruthanne Tudball, Pune, India
2017 Soda-firing workshop with Joe Finch, Pune, India
2017 “From traditional to contemporary: slipware on earthenware” workshop with Françoise Dufayard, Sanskriti Foundation, New Delhi, India
2016 Pit-firing workshop with Jane Perryman, Sanskriti Foundation, New Delhi, India
2015-2016 Intensive ceramics training program, Golden Bridge Pottery, Pondicherry, India
2014 9 month training with traditional Indian folk potter, Mumbai, India
Exhibitions
2024
Kindled Spirits 3, Good Earth Pottery, Bellingham WA, juried artist
Charlie Cummings Gallery – Cup: The Intimate Object XX, juried artist
Northern Illinois Pottery Tour - Midwestern ceramic arts tour, Forest Park IL, invited artist
57th Street Art Fair, Chicago IL, juried artist
Mug Madness 2024, Saltstone Ceramics, Seattle PA, juried artist
Small Favors 2024, The Clay Studio, Philadelphia PA, juried artist
Clay Cohorts: Onward 3 Show, Good Earth Pottery, Bellingham WA
Annual Winter Warmers Cup Show, Good Earth Pottery, Bellingham WA, invited artist
2023
Teabowl National, KC Clay Guild, Kansas City MO, juried artist
Inaugural Cup Show, Highland Studio & Gallery, South Bend IN, juried artist
Annual Winter Warmers Cup Show, Good Earth Pottery, Bellingham WA, invited artist
Pitcher Perfect 3, Good Earth Pottery, Bellingham WA, juried artist
Northern Illinois Pottery Tour - Midwestern ceramic arts tour, Forest Park IL, invited artist