CERAMICS: ART & PERCEPTION  ISSUE #126

LOOKING IN: THE WORK OF SUSAN COLLETT

written by: Denis Longchamps

From Sydney, Australia, a quarterly print magazine and digital format dedicated to ceramic art.  Offering ceramic art, critical writing and ceramic research. The quarterly journal was founded in 1990 by Australian ceramic artist and writer Janet Mansfield.  It was launched with the mission to elevate critical writing, scholarly discussion, and creative exploration within the global ceramics community.

Susan Collett ceramic work. Caption reads "she seems inspired by her sketches, yet there is no ink, no pencil marks"
Looking in: The Work of Susan Collett Written by Denis Lonachamps Sight is a Faculty; Seeing is an Art - George Perkins Marsh The environment and climate change has been, and still is, front page news for decades; it is real, although powerful people deny it. Researchers claim that we alienate ourselves from nature in the way we work and treat it, abusing natural resources for profit. A researcher in environmental philosophy and anthropology, David W. Kidner demonstrates in his writings that contemporary practices, such as industrialized monoculture, and other ways to exploit what nature offers to the service of modern life, contributes to the alienation of nature, a separation between humans and the natural world?. Yet, walking in a forest or a park often seems to reconnect us with nature. There, we tend to slow our pace, the stress level goes down, a certain peace of mind and serenity invade us, even if only for a short moment. Interconnectedness between the natural world and the human spirit has been the subject of multiple studies demonstrating the positive impact an excursion in nature has on our mental health. Artist Susan Collet explores these connections with her sketches, prints and ceramic works. Always armed with a sketchbook, she strolls parks and forests and reconnects with nature and her own psyche. When she stops to draw her surroundings, it is as much the landscape that covers the page as it is her state of mind. Sketchbooks are all around, always at close reach: in her studio, in her purse, in her car, in her suitcase when she travels. The drawings are not meant to be preparatory, they are to reconnect with spontaneity, "a philosophy perhaps rooted in [her] early experiences with plein air oil painting and ballet training" where she learnt to seize the present moment. Susan studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art where she received a BFA in Printmaking with a Minor in Ceramics earning her a full time living with a studio practice for over 30 years. For some of her prints, she seems inspired by her sketches, yet there is no ink, no pencil marks. She uses the branch of a tree, a stem of flower, or thick grass, to emboss the paper which adds a third dimension to the flat surface. The print becomes sculpture. She says that "the imagery I employ is organic in nature and relates directly to the body in its large scale and reference of lungs, veins and skin", all central to life itself. Interestingly, she added ceramics in her last year of studies, and ever since, she engages with both practices alternatively, one feeding the other. She received the inaugural Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics, an annual Prize from the Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery, in 2001. While initially wanting to use her award money to attend a residency in the United States, she instead went to Jingdezhen, China, known as the Porcelain Capital of the world. Ceramics have been produced there for the past thousand years, and its porcelain is of the finest quality. During her three-month residency in Jingdezhen, she explored the surrounding landscape. She writes "it struck me that the striated landscape of tea farming related to the layered landscape of our own lives." Again, the landscape becomes a metaphor for human interiority, the exploration of one's inner world. The striation patterns she observed in China made its way to her sculptural work, making it personal where her own life experiences overlap, and universal as it happens to all of us...there seems to always be one event overriding another... life happens!