large platter 17"x17" (this piece is unfired at the moment) with salt & pepper cellars as a chess board. These items will be available from my show FOLKLORE at the Candystore November 8th through December 7th
It has been interesting thinking about folkloric traditions and imagery and how I might reinterpret them with my own visual vocabulary. Having come from a culture where the "old world" still very much exists (Hungary) these motifs have always been a part of my everyday life...As some might say "normal". My family immigrated to the United States in 1956 from Hungary, escaping the Russian occupation. I also lived in Hungary when I was nineteen (in 1983-1984) and in the early part of this century I worked with a ceramics factory in the south of Hungary in a town called Hodmezovasarhely (translated it means the the town on the beaver plane, which if it were in the United States be called...Beaverton). The opportunity to work with the factory came via a fabulous woman named Maggie whose company, Synergy Designs, worked with the factory in Hungary producing table top and decorative ceramics. Maggie took me under her wing without ever having any design experience other than my own studio work and my Hungarian heritage and together we created a line of ceramics that was produced under my name for her company. (Synergy Designs is no longer in business and the line was discontinued in 2002). It was at this time I had the most amazing opportunity to get an up front view of my own heritage's ceramic tradition. I have to admit at the time, the whole "folksy" motif did not really do it for me. Never the less, I am never one to disregard things completely just because it is not my "thing". I can always find something to appreciate. I was able to see the hand painters working on traditional designs and I spent a lot of time looking at the factories private collection of traditional Hungarian ceramics. I saw more rooster motifs than I care to admit. Though I was not aware of it then something was quietly brewing in my psyche and poof out it comes now, seven years later, in these new pieces that I am creating for my upcoming show.
