Julia Galloway ::: Utilitarian Pottery

I moved to Montana from New York. Here, living in Missoula, I always look up, see the sky, the skyline and the clouds that define the vast open space.

I am, in some way, nourished by where we live. As simply as growing a garden, buying goods locally, community and the support of friends and neighbors or simply by the beauty of the place. By hanging plates from the ceiling I am intertwining objects for physical nourishment and reflections of aesthetic nourishment. Simply, in this room, we are “eating from the sky”

In this installation, the walls are painted subtly from grey to white and fade up into the distance. The room is kept cool and relatively dark so it takes time for ones eyes to adjust, and slowly the plates and clouds become clear.

The plates are made from porcelain, press into fourteen different cloud shaped plaster molds. They are fired in a gas kiln to c10, high fire and glazes with a celadon base glaze with cobalt carbonate. There is a total of 450 plates ranging from 6 to 24 inches across, with slip inlay decoration hung from wire. They are hung from small holes in the foot, the base of the plate with three steel wires, ranging from six inches to four feet from the ceiling.2014