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Patti Warashina: Ceramics Exhibition
April 5, 2023 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Free
Patti Warashina: Ceramics Exhibition
April 5 @ 8:00 am – 5:00 pm
The human figure has fascinated ceramic sculptor Patti Warashina for most of her 55+ year art career. Her sustaining interest in the human figure is likely due to the fact that her own body is the closest resource from which she draws her ideas. The use of the body gives affirmation to Warashina’s own daily existence, and serves as the subject of her own “visual diary” which, for Warashina, is a reminder, reflection, and observation of personal time and the civilization in which she lives. Warashina draws from her daily life and has an abnormal interest in the absurdity and foibles of human behavior, in which her figures have become the actors in her introspective narratives.
Artist Biography
Patti Warashina (born 1940) is an American artist known for her imaginative ceramic sculptures. Her works are in the collection of the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
She was instrumental in bringing the Seattle ceramic scene to prominence, heading up the department at the University of Washington, Seattle, as well as producing pieces that took inspiration from the Funk movement in the Bay area but with their own interpretations. Patti Warashina is best known for her figurative sculpture – pieces that tell stories which are often dreamlike or fantasies – and ranging in size from very small to larger-than-life. She works in low-fire polychrome ceramics, the colors and surface decoration both vivid and animated. While her primarily female figures clearly emerge from her own experiences, Warashina says, “They aren’t me exactly, or any version of me….they represent what I know and what I’m curious about. When I’m curious about something else, I’ll move on.”
Statement from Patti Warashina
“The human figure has been an absorbing visual fascination in my work. I use the figure in voyeuristic situations in which irony, humor, absurdities portray human behavior as a relief from society’s pressure and frustrations on mankind. At times, I use the figure in complex arrangements so that it will be seethingly alive. I like the visual stimulation of portraying human energy, as a way to compare it to any biological organization found in nature.”
Come visit the John Natsoulas Gallery to see fabulous sculptures by this fascinating artist.
