Potter & Printmaker, Zoe Craig, is VIVA’s February Guest Artist!

Zoe Craig is a potter and printmaker. In her work she is interested in exploring boundaries that exist between us and the world - how people interact with, relate to, and interpret objects, plants, and animals that make up their surroundings.

Zoe’s pottery is design focused, fun, and functional. She plays with color and surface design, making her own glazes and using simple brush strokes and wax resist to create shapes and lines. She feels a relationship to the things she owns and considers that the items we choose to live with reveal who we are. The things we use daily gain meaning through their use, holding a place in the rhythm of daily life. The feel, the texture, the weight, the aesthetic of a mug or bowl create a lifestyle that is our own. Themes that are common in her work include: longing, boundaries, relationships, ecology, ownership, light, the making of things and storytelling.

Zoe received her BA in Environmental Studies from Carleton College in 2014 with a focus on landscapes and perceptions. She interned at Highpoint Printmaking Studio for a season after graduating and now makes her prints in whatever space she can find in the places she lives, printing slowly using the back of a spoon. She has apprenticed with potter Maureen Karlstad for the last two years, learning how to run a clay studio and teaching beginning pottery classes. Among other projects, she is currently working on a photography and writing project that will document everything she owns and her relationships to those things. She is available for graphic design projects and occasional commissions.

Zoe answers some fun questions:

If you could have one work of art in your home from a museum or private collection, what would it be?

It would be hard for me to choose. Likely I would choose either to have one of O’Keefe’s cloud paintings or a more classic Rothko, as I could imagine looking at paintings by either of them for hours. Both of them are very emotional artists to me. There is currently an exhibition of 115 of Rothko paintings in Paris and it would be so amazing to be able to be among so much of his work. I also have a deep fondness for the painting The Floor Scrapers by Gustave Caillebotte, which I fell in love with when I was young. The light and movement in this painting are so filling.

Why did you decide to work in your chosen medium?

I love the physical nature of printmaking and pottery – how throwing on the wheel, handbuilding, carving a block, and the act of printing a block to paper involve not only creative and mental labor, but also physical labor. Both are sculpture acts.

I also love the element of repetition that can characterize both mediums, and how in this repetition they become modern processes of design and intention. They are both very process-oriented mediums. I do sometimes miss the ability to be more spontaneous with my work, as painting and drawing can sometimes be, and find the process of creating monoprints allows me this.

From where do you draw your inspiration?

I am always looking for new sources of inspiration, whether it be from books, places, people, new tidbits of information, the internet, other artists. Each printmaking series I work on has an underlying motivation or meaning and I probably spend just as long or longer thinking about what I want my work to say as I spend on the work itself. I am currently reading the book Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta and it has made me think a lot about the idea of rocks as sentient (I love rocks and how they can tell us stories about time), which has led me to learning more about the artist Afton Love, whose work my sister introduced me to. I’m also very inspired by the seasons, and by light and how it touches things. Whenever I’m out walking or driving I take a phone and a journal so I can take photos and write things down that inspire me.

What does your studio look like?
I have two studios – one for printmaking and one for pottery. In the past year and half I have moved three times and I move again in a few months, so what my studio is and what it looks like is constantly changing. Right now I’ve taken over the painting studio of the woman I am currently housesitting for. There is printmaking paper on the floor ready to be sized, projects that I’ve started and not yet finished everywhere, but I’ve got a desk and a flat file, and I just bought a cheap used intaglio press online. It won’t fit in the studio so it’s in the guest bedroom. I’ve also just spent a very long time cleaning out a room in the garage that was used as a pottery studio a few years ago, and I am turning it into a working pottery studio. A stray cat that we are taking care of lives in it.