Ceramic Sculptures

The forms in this series are influenced by botanical morphology – specifically, the perianth or floral envelope, whose petals serve to protect the most sensitive part of the plant before the eventual dispersal of the fruit’s seed. Powell’s sculptures seek to evoke a similar feeling of comfort and protection, serving as reminders of another time, both past and future, when one’s family is close and the world feels safe, offering an escape from the ephemerality of the present which can leave one feeling vulnerable and exposed. The Perianth series functions both as a personal etiology for the artist and as a broader exploration of the universal themes of nostalgia, sentimentality, and familial memory.

In terms of process, Powell is interested in manipulating material into something it essentially is not – shaping crude, raw clay, still studded with naturally occurring sands and stones, into incredibly delicate forms. The resulting pieces are light and elegant — impossibly thin and balanced in surprising ways. Each sculpture’s surface, riddled with scrapes and craters, is astonishingly soft and sensuous to the touch and each piece feels precious in such a finessed and attenuated state.

This concept of defied expectations extends beyond the physical properties of the work in that Powell is also investigating the mutability of perception, specifically in terms of Perianth’s overarching nostalgia and memory themes – – the present is intimidating in its authenticity, with no space for embellishment or fantasy, while memories of, and the subsequent yearning for, an era, place or person can become nebulous and fictionalized with distance and time. In this way, the works in this series act as physical manifestations of the unanticipated and misremembered.