Welcome Candice Methe (RAiR 2023)
Originally from Falmouth, MA., Candice Methe is a studio artist and educator. She has been working in clay for twenty-five years and is a current resident at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program in Roswell, NM. She received her BFA in Ceramics and Art History from Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ. and her MFA from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Inspired by historical objects and traditional ways of making, she has traveled to Japan, Ghana, Nicaragua, Mexico among other places to study the traditional practices of artisans working in clay. In pursuit of her artistic, peripatetic practice she has done residencies long-term and short-term at Santa Fe Clay, Red Lodge Clay Center and the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts. When not in the studio, you can find her outside exploring ghost towns, ruins, road-side museums, mountains and rivers with her two dogs Loulee Streetfighter and Deming Bones.
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Form is the element that makes my pieces interesting and engaging, drives my ideas and creative practice forward and is the foundation of my work and aesthetic. My way of creating work is rudimentary- using the coil and pinch method with many of my inspirations and ideas for form coming from historical pots, traditional ways of making, notions about labor, the cultures associated with those objects and cultures that subsist and have spiritual relationships with the land and places they live. The work I make is my soliloquy of simpler times.
I turn the soil.
I plant the seeds.
I grow the wheat.
I harvest the grain.
I grind the flour.
I trade for the salt.
I collect the water.
I knead the dough.
I coax the fire.
I bake the bread.
Nourishment comes in many forms-labor, vulnerability, connectedness, and desire. The vessels of clay I make are for sustenance. They are documentation of my intent and signifier of my connection to this life, both past and present. Having the hand present in my work is critical. It is through the element of touch I am able to honor honesty, vibrancy, energy, and humility.