Gail Altschuler Press Statement

Creativity, observation and innovation are at the heart of Altschuler’s artistic practice. 

Collectors are drawn to the originality, skill and the daring approach that she brings to ceramic and porcelain art. Building pieces by hand, she draws inspiration from observations of life and art history, as recorded in her sketchbooks. She uses her personal drawings of musicians, friends and works of art, seen and sketched with pen and ink or in pencil during visits to museums and galleries. 

Altschuler’s playful aesthetic uses the abstract cup, beaker or tumbler shape, something we are used to holding intimately, in our hands and against our lips. She adds feet and a neck to create a vessel that is a sculptural form but is also a bottle or bud vase.  She also creates plates as art installations.

She adds patterns, words and colours to enhance the story being told about the curious characters, from artists to musicians, sisters and families to masks and sculptures, and the refugees are some of the porcelain people inhabiting her work. The themes keep developing, they are informed by her continuous intensive research into art history.

Her sculptures are metaphors for the multifaceted personalities of people, which are sometimes amusing and sometimes surprising in their juxtaposition, as you turn or walk around the vessel. She uses clay and porcelain as her canvas, blurring the lines between art and craft. The plates are to be used as wall hanging installations or with plate display stands.

The idiosyncratic scalloped or ornamental edges on the handmade plates and accentuated feet and necks of the vessels, are weighed with the attention she gives to their surfaces. Sharp and blurry lines, Mishima inlay, etching techniques combined with sgraffito and underglaze washes. They are left unglazed or have a transparent glaze layer to highlight the etched, drawn and observed stories that she shares with her audience.