I am interested in the ceramist Bonnie Seeman because one of the things she is most known for is teapots, which is what I chose to focus on for the fun functional project.Seeman is an American ceramicist born in Miami, Florida (“Duane Reed Gallery-Bonnie Seeman”).She went to University of Miami for undergrad and did her Masters work at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (Seeman).She has been in many national and international shows and her works are a part of several private collections (Seeman).Furthermore she has been a lecturer and is currently an instructior in 3-D Ceramics at Florida Atlantic Univeristy (“FAU-Bonnie Seeman). Bonnie Seeman is a very successful modern ceramicist.
Seeman is skilled at both porcelain and glass (“Duane Reed Gallery-Bonnie Seeman”). She creates a variety of functional items such as bowls, cups, teapots, etc.In her artist’s statement she states that she is “interested in the utilitarian object and how it can be used as a means of narration.”She does this by comparing the visceral and the beautiful and mixing the anatomical and botanical in her teapots (Seeman).This combination of the anatomical and botanical allows her to not dwell on the ugliness of death but to emphasize the life that comes from death (“Duane Reed Gallery-Bonnie Seeman”).
This is an example of one of Bonnie Seeman’s teapots.If you were to glance at the teapot quickly, it would appear to be a flower on a leaf.The overall composition of the teapot suggests this as well, because of the curved lines and overall shape. The emphasis is in the center of the pot.The lines surrounding it and the difference in visual texture at this point create this emphasis.In the center on each side there are bugs and little sinews that suggest that this is a plant of some sort, perhaps a carnivorous plant. Furthermore, because the saucer is a leaf you would expect the teapot to also be a plant to create unity in the piece.However, if you look closer at the teapot itself you will find that also appears to be made up of muscle tissue.This is evident in the visual texture, which creates the appearance of muscles and bone marrow.At this realization the whole piece changes, instead of being something nice and pretty to serve tea out of, it is something almost grotesque.There is juxtaposition in this piece with something beautiful and filled with life, a flower or plant, and something dead or dying.These two ideas are unified through the color and texture of the flower, which is representative of both a flower and a body, and the bugs, which would be found both on a flower and a body.This theme is common in most of Bonnie Seeman’s pieces.
I chose Bonnie Seeman for several reasons.First of all, one of the things that she often makes is teapots and I was interested from the start of the project in teapots.Furthermore, I liked that she used form in a way that is not typical in teapots to make them unique to her.I also liked that her work, although functional, had a message.This reminded me of some of the other artists that we discussed in class.Also at the beginning of the project I had wanted to try to portray a message through my teapots.However, after talking to the professor and other students during class and critics I found that I was not getting the message across and it created to much variety in my pieces so I had to turn away from my original idea of a theme and focus more on unity.That is something that Bonnie Seeman does well, she gives a clear message in her work but there is still unity between the teapot and saucer.Through this research I have learned how important unity is to get a message across in your pieces.