The ordinary is quite extraordinary. Through objects of insistent profile and reductive form, my reference is to architectural, mechanical and industrial elements. The representation of function is in an allusive and enigmatic sense, suggestive of the past. Close consideration of these images of simplicity and stillness reveals a sense of history, traces of transformation that generate narratives of accretion and deterioration.

Currently Assistant Professor of Art at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, and part-time resident of Maine, Lynn Duryea was a studio artist working in Deer Isle and Portland for over 20 years before attending graduate school at the University of Florida, earning a Master of Fine Arts in May 2002. Lynn is a Founding Trustee of Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts and the first visual artist to receive Portland, Maine's YWCA Women of Achievement Award. An Emerging Artist at the 2004 NCECA Conference (National Council on Education in the Ceramic Arts), Lynn's work has been widely exhibited and published internationally.

Links:
www.art.appstate.edu/faculty.htm
www.artaxis.org/ceramics/duryea_lynn/lynn_duryea.htm

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I have been working in clay for thirty-five years. I was a self-taught functional potter until I attended graduate school at Boston University's Program in Artisanry and graduated in 1985. I moved to Maine and for twelve years pursued creating moderate to large scale sculpture with architectural references. During this period I completed and installed five large murals across Maine as part of the state's percent for art program.

After many years of embracing form as the focus of my work, I became attracted to the graceful curves and the surface possibilities offered by the pages of the open book. Books are an integral part of our lives and universal to most cultures. They contain scripts from countless languages, visually rich depictions, and stories that take our imaginations to unlimited horizons. My first books were the scale of coffee table books with book as object and text as mysterious embellishment. In the last four years I have focused on a diary sized book. The personal qualities of this size appeals to me because I can explore and depict thoughts reflecting on relationships, personal quandaries, and travel reveries, etc. The books in this "diary series" can be hung on the wall, displayed on a book stand, or rest on a table.

Along with these two primary interests, I have always continued to explore many ideas and have other bodies of work that approach clay in a variety of ways.

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When people encounter the landscape, its vastness is impressive, yet it is through the human scale that we relate most directly. When I walk in the woods, I collect objects by taking mental pictures, or by picking up sticks, rocks, rusty objects: reminders of a gesture or texture. In my garden, the placement of forms and colors are more intentional, my role in creation more direct. With clay, I am part of an ancient continuum of artists modeling this substance into forms which are usually hollow. My clay sculptures are created by pushing from the inside. The inner volume defines the form.

Sharon Townshend graduated from Syracuse University with a BFA in Painiting, and from Wesleyan University with a MAT, ceramics focus. She is currently teaching at University of Southern Maine.

Link: http://www.sharontownshend.com
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