Animated Urns

Project Statement

“Animated Urns” is a series of ceramic zoetropic sculptures and videos that evoke the mythic and supernatural. The ceramic works are stoneware jars thrown on a pottery wheel, and decorated with meticulous patterns through painting, sculpting, or carving the surface. An accompanying series of stop-motion videos animate these static surface patterns, recalling early animation devices, such as the zoetrope and phenakistoscope, as a method for glyphic storytelling. These videos can be projected nearby the jars, or screened on their own.

Recent works reference historical storage jars, with the patterns emphasizing their capacity for carrying memory and meaning, as well as for storing and transporting physical matter. Through stop-motion animation, an alchemical process of time and form turns vitrified clay into fluid, pulsing, living matter, endowed with life and agency. Whether in their static or animated forms, these vessels challenge modern boundaries between what is considered living and non-living.