Ceramicist Jordann Wood to speak to art students at CAC

The West Virginia University Creative Arts Center will host nationally know ceramicist Jordann Wood for a special speaking engagement aimed at WVU art students, Thursday, Feb. 9.

Wood describes herself, via her website, www.jordannsiriwood.com, as someone who makes medium-sized ceramic sculptures with a wide variety of colorful glazes and surface treatments.

For the everyday person, this may not mean much, but really, at the core of Wood's flower sculpture work lays an idea and observation we can all comment on or acknowledge: beauty. Or better yet, the notion of adornment or the making of beauty.

"Growing up in Arizona, the only thing I knew about flowers was from TV gardening shows that took place in faraway, much greener terrains," Wood said on her website.

"This deprivation resulted in a lifetime appreciation of the elusive lilacs, tulips, and roses that I knew existed outside of the patterns on my mother's nightgowns."

She achieves this focus and study through her choice of aesthetics and design. Flora on its own certainly communicates the idea of brief beauty, but Wood said that the details in her work sell the performance.

"I'm interested in excess and abundance," Wood said. "My aesthetic celebrates bigger, chunkier design that is highly stylized and the evolution of both the elegance of streamlined shapes and the kitsch of flamboyance."

Wood said this choice is a response to artificial floral decoration.

As for her process, Wood creates her sculptures in multiple parts, almost creating a series of mini sculptures which she eventually brings together to create her finished piece.

She describes the smaller pieces being made from hand- rolled slabs of clay as well as press molds.

"The clay forms are cut in sections and joined together to form hollow, bulbous, chunky, fluid, geometric and sometimes repetitive shapes," she said.

As you can see, this would cement one's own idea of excess and abundance.

Wood's lecture will take place in Bloch Hall at the CAC Feb. 9 at 5 p.m.