Ingrid Lilligren Artwork
Dee's Sniffer
Stoneware with porcelain plugs, 64"x32"x16"
copyright © 2002 Ingrid Lilligren | All Rights Reserved
Artist's Statement:
An homage to my friend, the artist Dee Marcellus Cole. She is exactly as tall as this piece and her nose comes to the opening in the front. A small pouch with herbs hangs inside. Scent is a strong prompt to memory and is a component I have used in a number of pieces. Her work is playful and incorporated mixed media; she often makes use of children's cowboy boots for the feet on her pieces. Her personality is strong and feminine; she buys many of her clothes at thrift stores and usually wears a skirt. During a recent taping for a TV show, she was asked to drape one of her figures as the generalized forms that represented breasts were deemed potentially inflammatory to viewers, so I had to include breasts in this piece.
Yearning
Stoneware, 47"x35"x37"
copyright © 2002 Ingrid Lilligren | All Rights Reserved
Artist's Statement:
First constructed in 1995, this piece encountered the uneven concrete of the back patio resulting in its early demise. In the course of rebuilding, the piece has evolved. The circles painted onto the triple belly represent a continuous cycle of counting days, an activity familiar to women as they keep track of their menstrual periods. I added the ear to the bowl area—one of the meanings of 'yearn' is to utter in an emotional voice and I wanted those utterances to have some chance of being heard. The piece is intended to express deep longing and yet contain a measure of hopefulness.
Foreign Aid, Part A (one of six)
Pit-fired ceramic with Braille text, 7.5"x6" diameter
copyright © 2003 Ingrid Lilligren | All Rights Reserved
Artist's Statement:
(Part A): Gwen Ifill recently interviewed the Carters on PBS. Jimmy Carter made the remark that for every dollar of (Part B): Foreign Aid the U. S. donated, Norway was giving seventeen. I decided to investigate. (#3): What I found was illuminating. The U.S. is dead last of 22 industrialized nations in foreign aid donations relative to gross domestic product. What a shame. The internet has thousands of sites with statistics, most of them quite alarming. (#4): I once read a definition of beauty as a purely aesthetic response, a disinterested observation, objective and objectifying. Statistics too put us at a remove. How can we put a face on the numbers we read about daily? (#5): How much cultural and personal identity have we invested in the remove that disinterested beauty and compressed data provides? (#6): If we define beauty to include engagement, could or would our relationship to the world and its issues change?
Dilly Dally
Porcelain, crystalline glazes, 5.5"x7"x 5"
copyright © 2005 Ingrid Lilligren | All Rights Reserved
Artist's Statement:
Crystalline glazes have a mystique about them—they are difficult to produce and erratic in nature. When they do work, they are gaudy, spectacular and mysterious. Each zinc based glaze has unique minerals that produce the colors and to an extent, the textures characteristic of these glazes.
In the back of my mind I have been thinking of working with crystalline glazes for several years as I thought these glazes might be well suited to the organic, biomorphic forms I make. They appeared to call out for a decorative finish, something elaborate and juicy. The current pieces use both crystalline and regular high temperature glazes. As the crystals appear randomly on the surface of the form, I think of them as recalcitrant manifestations of joyous play, neither here nor there, occurring in unexpected locations. Being whimsical in nature, they are named appropriately. Dilly dally means to waste time in hesitation or vacillation, to loiter or dawdle.