Ceramic artist Caroline Blackburn is part of a double-bill show we have on at the Provide Gallery with painter David Burns. While each of them works in different mediums, their pieces – both thoughtful experiments in form and material – feel as though they could be part of the same family. We caught up with Caroline from her home in L.A. to chat about her unusual techniques in ceramic sculpture.

Where are you right now?

I’m at my house right now. The Wi-Fi in the studio is not the best – it’s in the backyard.

Well, that’s a good commute!

Yes, you just have to watch out for the leaves on the way over.

Why don’t we start with talking about what your average day is like. How does the week roll out for you?

I’m in the studio in the morning, and this time of year is always a time for me to do some more research and experimentation. The shelves are full, and it’s an opportunity to let me try a new glaze, or try and break something down some more and see what happens. I’m looking forward to the summer, and to getting back in production and doing a new body of work. I had a one-person show in January in Los Angeles, and then I did the show at Provide, and then I was in Design Miami in May. Since January, it was just so much excitement and so much opportunity to share my work with others and get a lot of positive feedback. But I’m looking forward to the summer, when I can get back to it.

It’s interesting to look at that time when business is quieter as an opportunity – an opportunity to really dig into it.

For a long time I worked for UCLA Architecture. I’m not an architect, but what I learned from the architects is that when they’re teaching and the office is busy, you’re doing that business, but when it’s quieter, you need to set a tone or time that you can be quiet and just in the studio, and have no interference, and just play and do your work. I don’t think of it as play in the sense – it feels like play doesn’t say that it’s a serious thing. I’m into creating a piece that’s one of a kind, that really breaks down the notion of what a ceramic vessel can be in today’s language. But it’s an opportunity to experiment, do some more research, try some new things. It’s very serious endeavor.

I think of play as being a time to refill the creative well – you need that space where time or deadlines aren’t a factor.

I try to make that happen all the time. I’m very into spirituality and mindfulness. I’m in that mode every day in a place where I can be creative and allow my intuition to make the work and get out of the way, so that Caroline isn’t interfering – so that spontaneousness can happen without me being so critical of myself.

I’ve had my own studio for seven years, but I was in a co-op studio for a long time, and it was a challenge for me. There’s so many personalities, and there’s so many things happening in the space that just being by myself in my studio, with all my work, is a totally different kind of energy. I feed off of that. I don’t want to hear all the chatter – I need to be in silence. It’s a silent, quiet, meditative, kind of oneness thing.

What drew you to ceramics in the first place?

I went to ArtCenter Pasadena for fine arts. I took some ceramic classes in college and then I’m not sure how it happened, but I started to take some ceramic classes on the side when I was at ArtCenter, and that really made an impression on me. I was dedicated to being a painter and did a thesis for the graduate work, and I had some success with that. But it was really the clay that talked to me, and was just something that I connected with. I had this professor, he’s passed away now. But he had been in the military, and he made these very thin porcelain sheets. Then he’d make them into teapots. But the teapots looked like military tanks, and he’d light them up so they’d be illuminated inside. They were just so gorgeous and so beautiful. There’s a whole genre about teapots and tea cups,  but I was more interested in them as shapes and forms, and the thinness of the clay. And he taught me a bunch of techniques that I still use today. He taught me how to throw the clay so that it flattens out like a big sheet.

One of the things that I enjoy about ceramics is the heat, the heat that manifests the glazes and makes them react in different ways, and the colours that come out, the thickness of the glaze, the firing of the kiln. I hadn’t fired my own kiln until I got my own studio. But what I learned and really thrive on is running that kiln and managing the heat, and how it works, and the effects that it gives the clay – really embracing how that works in a very contemporary, conceptual way. 

Tell us more about your process – you’ve really pushed the form in terms of what a clay vessel traditionally can be.

I’m very interested in deconstructivism, that theory from the ’80s with Derrida. Zaha Hadid practices it, and Frank Gehry practices it – taking an object and taking it apart, disassembling it into a form that’s not a form that you expect. Like Picasso, for instance: taking cubism and taking a pot and showing it from different perspectives. But of course, that’s two dimensional. So it’s a very different experience.

When I throw I have a sense of what I want to make. And so I throw a cylinder on the wheel and make that into some kind of form or bowl shape, and then I take that as a starting point. And then I will cut clay off the block and throw that with my hands on a board, so that it flattens out like a sheet. Depending on what I’m making, I will take that and cut it up like pattern-making, and add those components to the piece. Or I will use coils to build up the sides to a certain height, and then add the cut pieces. I don’t always use them all, and the shapes that are left are pieces that I also use. They will sit around the studio for a couple of days, and then I’ll attach them in some way, or bend them in a way that now I can reuse the clay. And in today’s world where we all want to recycle, and we want to use everything, I kind of like that.

Are you inventing new processes?

Yes. My studio is in lockdown. I don’t want people to see and copy any more than they already do. I make my own glazes, and I’ve layered the glazes on top of each other, or I use silicon carbide to make the glazes bubble and crack at certain temperatures. I’ll also take a drummel and take off the outer layer of the glaze and expose what’s inside. It’s almost like sandblasting. 

And then how did you first connect with Provide? 

On occasion, I look at Instagram, and they looked like they had some interesting things. I went to Vancouver twice, the summer before I started working with David.  I just love it. I’m a Los Angeles native, and I had not been to the Pacific Northwest. I went to Alaska, I went to Vancouver and Seattle, and it was just amazing. I just love the coastline and the weather and the people.

And I saw that David had this amazing gallery and the shop, and it looked like really interesting things were happening in a place that’s not a big, busy city like Los Angeles. 

And how’s it been working with Provide?

Amazing. They are very supportive. They have a real design sensibility. My work is very contemporary, and it’s not for everybody. David clearly has an amazing eye for design and a curatorial eye. And I’m always grateful for that. 

Your work really celebrates how much beauty there is in imperfection.

Yeah. And you know, I do not draw the pieces in advance. I’m really drawing with the clay and creating with the clay in the moment. People ask, why don’t you have some help in the studio? And I’m like, that would be lovely, with the exception of I don’t know what I’m making, and so I can’t have somebody helping me when I don’t know what I need until I’m in the moment. I need some coils, or I have to throw this, or I’m waiting for the clay to dry enough to attach it to the piece. So it’s very in the moment.

And I think that’s one of the things with the pots. The pot lets me know what it’s going to be, and that only happens through the process of making it. It sounds strange – it has its own sensibility, like, this is what we’re doing. You need to follow along, get with the program, and then the pot does its thing.

Do you ever have failures? Do you ever get to a point where you know it’s not working?

Oh, yeah. The pieces David has are smaller, but most of the work that I generally make is about 26 inches tall by 20 inches wide. On that scale, sometimes I end up throwing clay at the piece. It’s not working, it’s not happening, the design is not coming together. There’s lots of different scraps that you can reuse, and different kinds of viscosities or manifestations, and sometimes I will throw things at the pot, and that helps. That goes along with my working process, and it works well for me. Some people will be horrified to learn that I throw clay at the pots. But the pot has a structure that can sustain that – it can sustain me adding a 10 inch by 4 inch piece and throwing it at the piece and then accepting where it goes. My methodologies are just different than the traditional potter. 

You’re currently doing a show with artist David Burns in the Provide Gallery. How do you find your work comes together with his artwork?

You know, I saw the work, and I was so excited, because if you took one of my pieces and you cut it in half, and rolled it out and put it on the wall – it looks just like his paintings. When I was a painter, I made white paintings that are a bit similar to his work. So I was thrilled. He’s someone who is interested in a lot of the same things, especially with colour and texture and the processes of letting the painting sit out in the land for however many days he does that. David’s work is beautiful, and it couldn’t have been a better match. 

Caroline Blackburn's show with David Burns will continue to be on view at Provide Design Gallery throughout the summer of 2024.

Photography by Seth Stevenson and Michael Clifford.