ARTIST’S STATEMENT

From my perspective, the language of clay is mute and absorbent.  It exists as a foundation, a constant and yet invisible presence – as pot, as brick, as toilet and basin, as earth.  I respond to its silence and its capacity.  It is a holder of time and of the unnoticed, of the underpinnings of consciousness and of daily life.

 In my work, I am interested in probing at this unnoticed space, coaxing the temporal and fleeting quality of experience into visible, tactile form.  The objects and installations I make echo familiar forms, but confound their meaning.  They are metaphorical containers, pinched to hold passing time, shifting light, the fragile uncertainty of being.  Boundaries are intentionally blurred: between interior and exterior space; between pot and sculpture; between object and drawing.  It is what happens at these blurred edges that interests me. 

Clay as a material speaks of the familiar, the concrete and the immutable, while simultaneously carrying a sense of transition, fragility and porousness. I am constantly interested in engaging the tension between these qualities. Making becomes an act of tactile listening, of leaning into my own unknowing and attending fully to that landscape at the edge of perception.

RESUME

BIO

Josephine Burr (she/her) is a ceramic and mixed media artist working in Boston. Her minimalist, abstract sculpture draws from a range of ceramic traditions from architecture to domestic objects, and centers around ideas of time and presence, labor, and the unnoticed spaces of daily life. Burr has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Recent residencies include Myndlistaskólinn í Reykjavík (Iceland); Haystack School of Crafts (ME); and Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts (ME). Burr has taught at Harvard University, University of Massachusetts, and the Sorensen Art Consortium at Babson and Wellesley Colleges, as well as numerous workshops and lectures nationally. She currently teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and is a 2021 recipient of the Boston Foundation’s Brother Thomas Fellowship.

Contact: josephine.burr at gmail.com
Instagram: @josephine.burr