Lorna Meaden received her MFA from Ohio University in 2005. She is currently a full time studio potter who lives in Durango, Colorado. Her work, is incredibly complex in both surface and form, celebrating functional forms and the dining experience.
I am drawn to work that is rich in ornamentation, with a lavish use of materials, both of which are scarce, in a culture of mass production. As explained in The Language of Ornament, “Ornament stood not just for everything that made pleasure possible: the energy to see and care about one’s environment, the ability to tell good work from bad, and above all the assumption, shared if not always articulated by the whole society, that beauty should, and could, be part of people’s everyday lives.” (Trilling, James, p. 191)
Historical sources for my work include 18th century European manufactured porcelain and silver. I draw from these sources, as they are connected to my heritage, and comfortingly nostalgic to the home where I grew up. They are appealing in their elegance of form, utility, and abundance in decoration; the practical and the extravagant. My sense of aesthetics superimposes sophistication and naiveté. My forms suggest sophistication through their sense of lift and use of exaggerated feet, in contrast to their playful gesture of stance, and the use of animated attachments. My approach to the surface of the work comes from the sensibility of a seamstress. I look at clothing and costume as sources for embellishment, referencing stripes, polka dots, and patterns from the jester costume, such as the diamond. The making of the work references the process of sewing with the use of darting, press molds made from patterned and textured fabric, quilting and upholstery, and attachments made from drawn patterns.
Lorna Meaden
