Barbara Tipton
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Willock & Sax Gallery 210 Bear Street PO Box 2469, Banff, Alberta T1L 1C2
For most of Tipton's artistic practice, she has made objects for daily use as well as objects intended primarily for the eye and mind. Both serve fulfilling aspects for her as an artist. The process of making each type of work reinforces and informs the making of the other.
Barbara Tipton is an expressive and innovative ceramic artist, who explores the aesthetic as well as technical elements of clay.
Tapping our memories, Barbara Tipton returns to familiar themes to investigate fundamental forms and expressions on and of cups and saucers.
The artist affirms that most of her “sculptural objects center around the idea of the cup and saucer. Recent works are part of an ongoing series of sculptural cups made on the wheel but not “thrown.” In many cases the clay was not wedged; instead, it was thrown in handfuls onto the centre of the wheel, beaten a little, then opened with a stick on a moving wheel. Large trimming tools removed enough clay to form a cup and saucer profile, and the “handle” was formed from part of the ‘cup’ body. These works originated as wheel-thrown forms, altered and assembled, but this evolved into drawing on the surface of paper clay slabs and forming them intuitively into three-dimensional shapes. Many of the works retain their visual identity as cup and saucer; others retain those origins only marginally. Whatever the outcome, my aim is not to be too specific, and I’m pleased when a certain amount of ambiguity creeps in.”