The two-thousand-year-old tradition of southwestern ceramics has been infused with a new energy and enthusiasm that has surprised and excited collectors and artists alike. Thoughtful and demure on the outside, Tammy Garcia contains an inner fire to create pottery that crackles with a spirited vivacity original to the art form.
Anyone who sees one of Tammys works is struck by her ability to stretch the boundaries of the clay to contain her vision. A potter's art is generally limited by the size and shape of the vessel he or she designs. In Tammys case, it is as if the clay itself attempts to expand to better convey her dramatic design work. Part of that sense stems from the amazing proportions of Tammy's pots. She thrills at self-imposed challenge, and this often leads her to create pottery of almost unheard-of size. The other part, however, comes from a true symbiosis between Tammy and her medium. Pottery has been an outlet of creative personal expression for two millennia; Tammy was brought up in a family steeped in the tradition, and is both respectful of, and thankful to, the powers that allow her to share her exquisite talents. In exchange, it seems she has been rewarded with clay and ash that yearn to hold the voluptuous shapes she molds and display her intensely animated designs.
The artwork that Tammy produces is at once instantly recognizable, yet difficult to categorize. This is the mark of a true artist; her work is constantly changing and reinventing itself, pushing the envelope and altering the medium of pottery for all who follow. She took the pueblo tradition of carving bands of design into vessels and shattered the rigid format of her ancestors.
Her designs come spilling out of her in such a rush that she eagerly uses the entire surface of her pots as her canvas, as opposed to etching motifs into a single band around the circumference, as had been the custom. She adapts and redefines cultural motifs into stylized structural carvings that explode across the surface of her works.
Tammy may take a leaf pattern, reverse it, rotate it, and send it undulating along the façade of an urn until the dizzying theme covers the exterior. She might then offset this barely restrained chaos by completing her pot with an unadorned, fluted lip. This flexibility and embracing of extremes is a trademark of Tammys revolution. Her dynamic creations have set her squarely at the forefront of contemporary pottery.
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