Ceramic and 3D Artist Research

I haven’t yet looked into any ceramic artists, so I’ve found 2 that I’m using as reference points for my next pieces.

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Kiko Miyares

“My goal is to go beyond the conventional, merging aesthetics with utility and exploring how form can influence perception.”

Miyares, 2024, (https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/02/kiko-miyares-headlights/)

Miyares creates carved, wooden sculptures that explore expectations, perspective, and understanding. Using everyday images, objects, and people to change our perceptions, and question what we already know.

1. Road or ravines, 2024, carved and painted wood

2. Road or ravines, 2024, carved and painted wood

3. ULTRA 01, 2019, Polychrome wood, 210x20x35cm, Única

I am obsessed with Miyares literal play with time and space, particularly matter itself. See above, how he changed light into a solid. The neon-like colours accentuate the beaming headlights, as if they are reflectively blinding. I also enjoy how they can be displayed in different ways. For example, the centre photo looks like a series of cars falling from the sky, or hovering spotlights desperately searching for something lost.

Back roads, 2024, carved and painted wood

This piece directly relates to my works, which explores representation of the landscape. Miyares beautifully plays with perspective here, as the specific angle tails off in each direction, but the side pieces appear like the edge of a canyon. The car, protruding, slightly enlarged from the road behind to suggest movement. You can feel the car gliding along the valley road. It reminds me of my time in The Lake District in 2021, doing the exact thing.

At the same time the peace feels like a floating island as if falling pieces of a planet due to the sharp underbelly of the land. I hope to play with perspective as Miyares does in my own work.

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John Booth

An illustrator, textile designer, and ceramicist, Booth makes abstract ceramics including figure heads with painterly designs.

These pieces are actually a collaboration with UK death specialists Farewell, creating urns to bring positive conversation and the approach around death, to bring light into the subject, and focus on the celebration of life.

I love his exercise of colour and playful collage. The idea isn't to be polished and perfect, rather be expressive and suggestive. He recalls his inner-child to invoke happy and stimulating emotions. It’s also a beautiful way to remember someone, especially as urns and death is visually dark, and sometimes dull. Pouring colour and pattern into monumental objects leaves the lasting impressions as positive, to balance the overwhelming sadness.

I also enjoy his cut and paste process, as if ‘sticking’ flowers and protruding shapes onto the basic urn shape. It funnily suggests the idea of masking the sadness, as if covering it up, which is a welcome balance to again, counter the negative emotions.