Joyce St. Clair Voltz
Biography
Bio: Raised in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, Voltz received her BFA in Ceramics from the University of North Texas in 2011. Pursuing a greater understanding as an artist, Voltz enrolled in the MFA program at Wichita State University where she earned her MFA in Ceramics and was fortunate to study contemporary art in Japan, Australia, Cuba, Mexico and New Zealand. After graduating in 2014, Voltz moved with her husband to Shawano, Wisconsin where she started a studio practice. Then moving from the Midwest to Red Lodge, Montana, Voltz became one of the Red Lodge Clay Center’s 2015-2017 Long Term Resident Artists and was named one of Ceramics Monthly’s Emerging Artists of 2015. In 2017 Voltz was invited to be a participating artist in the 2017 Curitiba Biennale in Curitiba, Brazil. Shortly after, she moved to Cedar Rapids Iowa to be a Resident Artist at the Iowa Ceramics Center and Glass Studio. Most recently, Voltz completed a two-month teaching residency at Yizhou School and Studio Nong in Nanning, Guangxi, China. Having completed her residency, Voltz has remained in Cedar Rapids where she is continuing to work as an artist and educator. Statement: I believe in the celebration of a robust femininity. The exchange between volume and ornament, delicacy and substantially distinguishes the relationship between culturally persistent ideals of femininity and what I understand to be my own sense of the feminine. A robust femininity informs the relationship between form and surface in my work. Robustness conveys strength through fullness and power; femininity is womanliness yet culturally synonymous with fragility and grace. My ideas of robustness and femininity are pushed and pulled in the surfaces and decorations of stout voluminous forms. Embedded and sprigged ornamental gestures emerge and converge with regulated thrown lines to create undulating, chunky curves. Powerful flowing colors connect the surface to the form through depth and decoration and provide an indulgent intensity through glistening, thick rivulets. My pottery personifies an identity that is not characterized by fragile objects of cultivated beauty but rather is proclaimed by substantial pots that recognize a genuine joy in a robust femininity deserving of celebration. In celebrating the duality of what is robust and what is feminine through generous forms and embellished surfaces, I am taking advantage of the history of Rococo era decorative and utilitarian porcelain from 18th c. Europe and its relationship to the feminine identity. Porcelain china is layered with denotations of class and materialism; the 18th c. heralded a time in which the definition of femininity became tied to a woman’s pattern of consumption. Porcelain china served as a metaphor for the female condition, and the ‘depth’ of a woman was related to decorative objects and surfaces. The Rococo era style of decoration reinforced the relationship between sumptuousness, fragility and femininity that persists contemporarily. I am manipulating the language of porcelain pottery by employing exaggerated volumes and gestures to convey the material’s strength and durability as opposed to delicacy. The generous use of clay, glaze and decoration contrasts the historical cultivation of refined, delicate porcelain. The forms are plump and dense, the glaze saturates in both color and form and the decoration merges with the body to create thick impressed physiques. Pottery provides a generous utility and luxurious history to create a language with which to explore qualities of robust femininity. Striking at the ideas of what is definably feminine, visually feminine, and my personal sense of the feminine, my pottery is my unapologetic desire for a substantial understanding of feminine identity separate from social and aesthetic dogma.Source of Biography
http://www.joycestclair.com/aboutRelated artwork
Cup