Ryana Lawson

Website:

Artist Statement:

The cyclical nature of life and death haunts my thoughts and this notion is what drives me to preserve my ideas in clay. My studio practice emphasizes the border between what is recognized as real and what is embellished through transformation. I find inspiration from mythology as a way of bringing magic into the mundane. Each illustration or form becomes a rough translation of things recalled from memory, often obscured in both scale and shape. What remains a constant in my work is my sense of touch and regardless of material, my fingertips are imprinted on everything I make. The images that I draw on the surface of my pieces or build sculpturally in clay tend to be things from my immediate surroundings, the flora and fauna that preoccupy my world that are overlooked despite their extraordinary existence. I am most attracted to beautiful plants that are dangerous, small animals that are ferocious, and the seemingly innocent relationship between them all. While these images are often referenced symbolically throughout history, it is their simultaneously universal yet deeply personal language that I aim to interpret. 

The pieces for this exhibition are from a body of work featuring tall, hand-built vases illustrated with colorful flora and fauna. The drawn animals, flowers and leaves are mundane: they are creatures whose shapes fill the background of our everyday lives. Each vessel contains a subtle, suggestive narrative. On the two outside vases, each animal is poised with a flower that may be poisonous while a bulging snake exists innocently between delicate tulips on the urn in between. Together, they form a scene with two animals on the outskirts of a dangerous predator. These pieces are shown coexisting together to highlight their presence outside of our human lives and the intricate tension on each form – everybody in between and altogether. While we coexist with the flora and fauna that make up our lives, there is a delicate tension between life and death and the simultaneous destruction of our existence.  

Biography:

Ryana Lawson was born and raised Rochester, New York. She works mostly in ceramics, focusing on whimsical hand-built objects with colorful and illustrative surfaces. She is currently a resident artist at Pottery Northwest in Seattle, WA where she was awarded the 2020 Wally Grant and 2020 De Poi Award. She graduated with her MFA from the Pennsylvania State University in 2019 and was the recipient of the Penn State Creative Achievement Award. She received her BFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2015. In 2016, Ryana was a post-bac at the University of Colorado Boulder and in the following year was a resident artist at the Flower City Arts Center in Rochester, NY. Ryana continues to make work fervently in quick bursts and spurts while riding out the wild wave that is our weird existence. While highlighting the weirdness of our world in clay, she attempts to laugh and cry along the way and hopes that her work will make you feel the same.