Molosco: Handformed Porcelain Dinnerware
The right bowl, not too large, nor too teensy, heft enough for fish soup, pretty enough for you. Instead of the photograph’s recording of light, my fingers pressing into porcelain. Then came more bowls, plates, cups, and platters bigger and smaller, the white gilded with gold so as to put the edge on my best intentions that still came out a little more awkward than I’d intended, along with a black matte that I need everyday. Perfect, nonetheless.
Laura Letinsky is an artist working in photography, porcelain, and textiles, based in Chicago where she is also a Professor at the University of Chicago.
In Letinsky’s art, she aims to provoke and delight by bringing what is often considered imperfection into a state of appreciation. The pleasure of her work embraces the astonishment and fragility of life.
“Making is for me a means to understand and to appreciate the world. Rather than relying on the rapidity of mass-produced objects and images, making is a way to utilize our senses more fully. My photographs are an invitation to consider one’s physicality as a moving, binocular, sentient being, just as my porcelain dinnerware extends the opportunity to consider the hand and the body, yours, as well as those that made the dish and the food you are enjoying. “
