The Cape Town Ceramicist Making Crinkled Vases and Clay Faces

Here’s a tip for anyone suffering from the fear of starting something creative: Make the ugliest thing you can think of. That’s the genius bit of advice that ceramics artist Ceri Muller’s partner gave her when she felt blocked, faced with her first lump of clay. “I did that and carried on doing it and those ugly little things morphed into these heads that I grew to really love,” she says.

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04.09.20

Current Obsession

Think Face Pottery Is a Millennial Thing? Meet the Artist Who’s Been Doing It Since the ’70s

When Jill and I posted pictures of our favorite books on Instagram last week, mine featured one of my favorite objects in my living room, shown above: A pot, used by me as a planter, that features two hand-painted, color-blocked pastel faces. I bought it on eBay for $10 a year and a half ago. I don't remember how I found it. I had no idea, at the time, who the maker was, only that her name was Victoria Crowell and I assumed she was an obscure local artisan who made the pot in the '80s. I was mostly correct.

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10.25.18

Eye Candy

Prediction: You’re Gonna Want Each One of These Abstract, Geometric Danish Rugs

Röd Studio specializes in rugs made with non-traditional materials, experimental forms, and a more conceptual idea of storytelling behind each composition. Their Assemblage collection, which employs materials like horse and goat hair to create a more three-dimensional work, was inspired by the visual identity of Marrakech, while their Face It pieces explore both the humanity and abstraction of masks.

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07.21.14

Eye Candy

Ben Sanders, Artist

L.A. artist Ben Sanders was already making paintings, drawings, illustrations, and sculptures when he co-founded a collaborative art direction and photography studio, Those People, not too long ago. As if all those mediums weren't enough, though, the 25-year-old Art Center College of Design graduate recently started making objects, too, in the form of ceramic pots that he finds and uses as 3-D canvases, for paintings of wildly colorful air-brushed faces compiled from playful '80s-style shapes.

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