Lise Herud Braten appears on the cover of ceramic review this month.
Follow the link below as she talks to Jane Audas about her journey from cloth to clay.
Lise Herud Braten’s primary interests lie in creating highly textured and natural, organic forms, with references to details in nature and the urban environment. Memories of growing up in a rugged landscape in Norway inform both shapes and mark-making, imbuing the pieces with a sense of place.
Lise works with many different techniques, from delicately thin thrown vessels to roughly textured slabs of coarse clay. Many of the pieces start off on the potters wheel, before being manipulated, altered and carved to soften their shape and appearance away from the perfect circular form. Combining different making techniques within each piece often results in spontaneous and unplanned shapes and structures.
The instinctive nature of making in this way instills a natural and
uncontrived expression of a moment in time captured in the shape of the piece.
Using a variety of stoneware and porcelain clays, each piece is layered with slips, engobes, oxides, glazes and natural ash, applied in a painterly and abstract way. Often the pieces are fired several times, with new layers added between each firing. The resultant effect of this treatment suffuses the pieces with a sense of history, of time spent exposed and weathered by the natural elements. There is a sense of timelessness and quiet beauty deep within each piece.
