This piece titled “Flux” by Judy Onofrio is featured in a review of her work in Ceramics Art and Perception issue 92. The work is composed of ceramic forms and found objects, primarily bone, that the artist collects and cleans for this purpose. The assemblages are then unified by paint surfaces that accentuate the feeling that the sculptures are a living thing.
Bone are very particular objects. They are not made, by hands nor geologic process. They are grown, but unlike most living things, they survive death. They are the structure of animals and carry a memory of them, yet taken as objects they evoke another kind of architecture. They can evoke a sense of the undying principles of life, it is this I believe that is behind a cultural obsession with the human skull.
This work then, which combines found objects grown from natural process and artist rendered shapes made from earth and transformed by fire come together to give new meaning to both. The delicate hue of the assemblages pulse with life and point to a notion that the cycles of life and death are part of the creating process, a part of every life.
