Drawing x Ceramics 4 (Tiles)

One of my fellow artists had these fired, white earthenware tiles from a previous project, and decided to give them to me! They are perfect for exploring a pixelated artwork in ceramic form. However, I'm drawing on them to resemble broken pottery pieces.

Broken pottery shards that have been lost to time, and dug up like artefacts, hold a rich energy containing stories and history of where it's been, and who was in possession of it. There is a project called 'Fragment Found', established in 2021 by artist Eva Jack. It is an ever-growing online catalogue of broken pottery shards. It's an open resource where the public can submit their own finds, which encourages collaboration and exchange of stories to establish community and mutual growth.

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"The aim is to build a community which centres around the joy of collecting, identifying and sharing mysterious pieces of history, which would otherwise remain undocumented."

Fragment Found, 2024. (https://fragmentfound.com/archive/)

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This is what is inspires me, and hope to recreate in these small ceramic pieces. With all the history it holds, it has developed a character that makes it materialistic and valuable. Interestingly, the collections project birthed a related artistic project, which takes some of the pieces to be reworked into larger, imaginative reproductions of what the pattern may have looked like. Lost histories are pieced together and reconstructed with fictional narratives from a modern understanding, told through the object function and design.

I'm using my DIY underglaze crayons, testing them out on these tiles. With how small they are, I'm just playing with shape, colour, and patterns, which will be pieced together once glazed and fired. On some I've drawn very abstract representations of the world around me, as shown below. They are naive, and do not directly signify what it represents.

• Decorative, architectural design

• Eyes

• Castle walls

• Chimneys

• A landscape slope

I'm glazing these in clear again, as I want the attention on the design. I hope they come out glossy, and the drawing doesn't get lost against the white.