Priscilla Mouritzen
Priscilla Mouritzen is a South African-born ceramic artist who has lived and worked in Denmark for the past 35 years. Recent Artist-in-Residence work periods (in Arizona, Montana and North Carolina in the US, in Kohila in Estonia and in Johannesburg in South Africa) have given her the opportunity to experiment with different ways of treating the clay surface prior to wood-firing. She fires her high temperature work at the International Ceramic Center - Guldagergaard in Denmark, in the huge Cross Draught kiln built by Fred Olsen in 1998, or the Train kiln built by Robert Sanderson and Coll Minogue.
Her lecture will explore the simplest ingredients - local clay bodies, kiln wash, kaolins and ball clays are always on hand when taking up a residency in a strange workshop in a new country. Using these materials, she created surfaces on work to be wood-fired which ensures diversity and richness of effect, and perhaps protects against a "too shiny, too brown" look emerging from the kiln. During a recent residency at Starworks she experimented with low temperature wood firing using terra cotta clays and terra sigilata, and continued this research during a visit to South Africa. Work of South African ceramic artists will be shown and discussed.
