It Must Be Finished to Be Beautiful

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Image courtesy of Neutral Ground

Rebecca La Marre, When the Pot Breaks the Potter Laughs, Hosted by AKA artist-run, Nuit Blanche Saskatoon, 2021.

When I throw functional-wares—items like mugs that would normally be discriminated against for display in a fine-art gallery because of their association with proximity to the body, commerce, and use in everyday life—I take the resulting scraps and fire them alongside finished pots in atmospheric kilns.

Alternative firing methods in ceramics frequently cause damage. Instead of discarding broken wares, I re-purpose shards and bring them together with the throwing scraps into assemblages.

I decorate these objects with what I find in my environment; organic materials from my garden, phosphorus from onions, iron from beets, potassium from banana peels, clay collected from the South Saskatchewan / kisiskāciwani-sīpiy ᑭᓯᐢᑳᒋᐊᐧᓂ ᓰᐱᕀ riverbank, ash from the forest-fire smoke ever-present in the air throughout recent summers. Working with these materials is a way to connect with the environment and experience agency.

The title draws inspiration from the book “It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished: A Memoir of My Body” by Kate Gies.