Brooke Fasani Auchincloss

My feel for art began at a very early age when my Grandmother, who lived in the South of France and knew many great artists, exposed me to art and the art studios in which it was produced. Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Giacometti were all an integral part of my childhood. I was already thinking like an artist in secondary school, where I produced and sold portraits, worked at art galleries, received awards for numerous works and attended summer programs at Parsons School of Design in New York City.

I have always been an artist but throughout my life I struggled to find an art form that fully speaks to me. It had to contain so many elements and it occurs to me that I got to ceramics because of its elemental nature. It is literaly earth shaped by water, then tested and forever altered by fire and air.

My artwork begins with forming shapes on the wheel. They are Egyptian Queens, Syrian deities, and Grecian goddesses with undulating forms. Graceful feminine figures with classical curves that contrast the deep textures to come. I then fire the pots, removing them when they are red hot (1850 degrees) and I place them in firespitting canisters that lock in the smoke and fire to do their work. They emerge spitting and steaming revealing their many layered surfaces.

I have always been a storyteller and what I love about Raku is the depth of the surface and the millions of stories the viewer can find in those depths - whirling clouds, waves crashing, human elements mixed with fire and water and smoke and shadows. My pieces have many stories hidden in the layers of their surfaces, lovingly enfolding and unfolding in their curves, sharp angles and lightening like cracks.

It is important to me that these 'stories' are created by something beyond me - chance, accident, spirit, something beyond me speaking through me in a partnership with the elements.