Janet Williams : Ceramics
Janet Williams was born in South Wales in the UK and received her undergraduate education in London – Fine Arts at Middlesex Polytechnic (and at Ecole des Beaux Arts, Aix-en-Provence, France) and postgraduate studies in Ceramics at Goldsmith’s College, London University. She obtained her MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and is now a permanent resident of the USA . Before coming to UNC Charlotte, Janet was based at Art Farm, a non-profit artist residency program in Marquette, Nebraska which she co-founded and has co-directed for 12 years. Janet has also taught at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Cleveland Institute of Art and the University of Michigan. Janet’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and internationally and she has received many awards including: the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, McKnight Foundation and Artist Fellowships from the Nebraska Arts Council. She has had residencies in the United States, Canada and in Europe including the Bemis Center, Kohler Co. Arts/Industry, Vallauris in France and the Banff Centre for the Arts. She has recently completed a1% for the Arts Commission for the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Janet’s studio practice has focused predominantly upon mixed media installation with ceramic as a major material and conceptual component. An experimental approach, conceptual bias, process orientation and response to place are all aspects that characterize her artwork.
"I have always tested the material limits of cIay. I am drawn to its elemental and transformative nature and its ability to retain impressions or "memories" embedded into its substance through fire. I often work with clay in conjunction with combustible materials, like organics, and over the last few years, books and other printed matter. These combustibles burn away during a kiln firing but leave impressions and coloration in the clay - and sometimes, carbonized residues of the process. A final installation will often present objects as by-products of the process of their creation. Like fossils, these artifacts can reveal information encoded within them.
The influence of place, my former home in Nebraska and other places where I have created works, is felt strongly through an intersection of opposites – the Cartesian and the organic, structure and nature. My present focus and aim is to weave together the process and the concept through experimentation, to arrive at new places—physical and metaphorical"
