Brigit Hurst

Ceramics, Pottery, and Middle School Art

My works are reflecting my inner longing for balance, beauty and something like “the essence” in life. I enjoy the immense possibilities that clays, glazes and firing techniques have to offer.

I am fascinated in forms that cross between sculpture, function, architecture, and design. Much of my work has been inspired by shapes and structures created by nature or objects made by humans, like pueblo pottery or prehistoric ceramics.

Some years ago when I traveled across the Southwest of the States I have discovered a particular hand building technique with coils. Up to the present day I experiment with it and create new forms, occasionally combined with pieces made on the potter’s wheel.

I am interested in finding balance between structure and form. I am drawn in by the details of a form that allude to the story of its creation; the rhythm and pattern of the impressions of fingerprints or traces from the work-process on the potter’s wheel.

I do not seek to hide my process, but to embrace and extol it, capturing the texture of change. Up to the present day I have always been fascinated by the use of the hands as the only tool, seemingly so “primitive” and simple, yet in actual fact, years of practice and skill are required to reach an artistic level.

The rhythm of working with the hands, gives rise to even but never perfect or uniform structures and shapes. The texture made by fingerprints has similarity to the flow of handwriting; the smallest change of the rhythm of the hands stays visible and is documented.