Alison Kudlow – Sculpting the Fragile and Resilient

How Ceramics And Glass Reveal Themes Of Vulnerability And Connection

Alison Kudlow explores bodily experiences through fragile mediums, fusing glass and ceramic to symbolize resilience, memory transformation.

Alison Kudlow’s artistry is a testament to the profound interplay between material, form the human experience. Her sculptures, which fuse the delicate yet enduring qualities of ceramics and glass, transcend traditional boundaries, evoking a sense of vulnerability and strength that resonates deeply with contemporary audiences. Kudlow’s ability to manipulate these fragile materials into forms that feel both precarious and eternal speaks to her mastery of craft and her sensitivity to the human condition. Her work is not merely an exploration of materiality but a meditation on the interconnectedness of life, the body the natural world.

With a career marked by exhibitions in esteemed galleries and a recent residency in India, Kudlow continues to push the boundaries of her practice, creating works that are as technically innovative as they are emotionally evocative. Her sculptures, often suspended in a state of flux, challenge perceptions of time, permanence the relationship between organic and industrial forms. In this interview, Kudlow offers a rare glimpse into her creative process, sharing how personal experiences, technical experimentation a deep connection to her materials shape her extraordinary body of work.

How did your experiences with illness, surgery, pregnancy motherhood influence your approach to working with ceramics?

I made all of the work for my recent solo show while pregnant with my second child. For me, sculpture is inherently about an object in relation to the body of its maker and the viewer. Seeing and feeling my body transform as I made the works impacted the forms I created. They became more bodily; they swelled, they puckered they leaked.

Clay is a material that is in dialogue with the body that molds it. That body and its motions are imprinted in the clay. The clay responds to pressure much like a body; its surface wrinkles when compressed, stretches when pulled, tears when cut. My experiences of bodily trauma foster a sense of empathy with the material. Meanwhile, working with clay gets me out of my head and back into my body in a way that feels restorative.

“Alison Kudlow’s sculptures embody a breathtaking exploration of material andemotion, balancing tenderness with strength and invoking profound empathy.”

Can you describe the technical process behind your unique method of capturing glass in motion how this technique enhances the themes in your work?

Ceramic and glass are technically incompatible because the rates at which they shrink and expand in the kiln are different. When fused together, they inevitably crack, adding an additional visual tension to my work.

After firing my ceramics, I add glass to them and place them back in the kiln. I suspend the pieces above the kiln floor on hand-built structures which allows space for the glass to ooze downward with gravity. Through experimentation, I developed custom kiln schedules to heat the glass to my desired levels of viscosity. By varying the peak temperature, the rate at which the kiln heats the duration at each temperature, I can provoke different outcomes, ranging from calm pools to frothing bulges.

With glass pooling in and oozing from ceramic forms, each piece feels precarious, like a moment that cannot possibly last. The sculptures appear to be in process, rather than being static. As if the glass is moving too slowly to perceive, the work implies a glacial pace, challenging anthropocentric notions of time.

Your sculptures evoke a fluidity between human and non-human forms. What inspired you to explore this blurred line how do you hope viewers interpret it?

It’s tempting for us humans to think of ourselves as separate from the natural world. That attitude has emboldened us to wreak havoc on the earth and the species with whom we share it. To me human-being feels more porous and I feel myself in deep connection with—and not entirely distinct from—animals, plants, rocks…the universe. I hope my sculptures can remind viewers of their own experiences of fuzzy boundaries to create an empathic resonance beyond the human.

How do the metal elements in your sculptures contribute to the interplay between organic and industrial forms in your pieces?

Adding mental elements into my work complicates their otherwise organic forms and makes the ceramic and glass appear all the more fragile. The relationship between the materials is layered–it’s functional, it’s decorative it’s emotive. The inclusion of metal and rubber elements adds tension, acting as a stand-in for external forces exerted upon the forms. The metal often supports the piece, but sometimes pierces it to do so. There’s tenderness and violence embodied in their interplay.

In what ways do you feel that working with fragile, organic materials like glass and ceramic helps convey the ideas you address in your art?

I find it interesting what we deem fragile. I once heard Fred Moten say that tombstones represent a “shared delusion of permanence.” We think of such monuments as permanent because their rate of decay is much slower than ours. I suppose we think of ceramic and glass as fragile because we’ve seen them shatter. But we’ve also seen ancient ceramic vases dug up in Grecian ruins we’ve seen obsidian volcanic glass used to make arrowheads and knives. Our own bodies are simultaneously frighteningly fragile and astonishingly resilient. That duality is at the centre of my work.

EDITOR’S HIGHLIGHTS