Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Tracie Griffith Tso | Episode 1208
Tracie Griffith Tso works in her studio at the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia. Featured works include a hand-built koi pitcher with maple and bamboo painting on rice paper; a stoneware bamboo pomegranate platter with birds symbolizing longevity, resilience, and abundance, cone 6, electric-fired; and a brown stoneware giant panda teapot with bamboo blossom and sculpted detail, cone 6, electric-fired.
Clay Call
Lets hear from YOU! Click HERE.
SPONSORS
You can help support the show!
GRPotteryForms.com
Number 1 brand in America for a reason. Skutt.com
For all your ceramic needs go to Georgies.com
What usually comes first for you, your form, your surface, or the story?
The form. I look for an interesting form that will frame a composition. I will also look for symbolic shapes. If I can put a fan shape, a nice oval, something like that.
How do you balance that precision of form with the spontaneity of brush work?
And that is a balance. You’ve hit it on the head. What I do is called spontaneous flower bird painting. Literally. And that is a balance, I don’t feel like I need to get really complicated with the form. The spontaneity comes with the brushwork itself.
Are there technical challenges that you face with your ceramics that the average outsider might not notice?
In Chinese brush painting on paper, you have rice paper and you have black ink that is permanent. Not erase-able. If it goes on your mom’s tablecloth, there it is. So, I was trained with black ink. If you make a mistake you just go onto the next piece of paper. When you are on pottery you can use a sponge. Don’t do a lot of it, but you could. And that’s the beauty of being on the pottery. However pottery has surprises when things come out of the kiln. So there’s trade offs, there’s definite trade offs.
How much of your work is trying to reflect cultural heritage vs experienced life or life experiences?
I think the underpinnings are cultural, but I think my subject matter tends to be more reflecting life. I will do hamster portraits. I highly doubt a sloth is a traditional Chinese subject. So I really branch out on the subject matter but show it with the technique that is traditional.
What do you hope that the average viewer feels when they understand your work?
I like to kind of transport the viewer into a happy place, certainly. A nice, comforting place. I want to fill their heart, but I also want to transport them into this world that is culturally kind of interesting. I want to give the message, This is a little different, and aren’t you curious about this?
You mentioned you do a lot of teaching, has that made you a better potter? A better artist?
Teaching is so important in keeping your artistic mind fresh. I get a lot of ideas from my students. After you’ve been teaching 15 years, put it that way, and you are doing a worksheet for every single class. My husband says I could write a book. They force you to come up with different combinations and subject matter. You dissect what you do because you have to teach it. So I think teaching is a wonderful way to kind of keep your artistic fitness.
Book
Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
Contact
Instagram: @traciegriffithtso