Joy Brown's "Clay: A Way of Life" Opens April 2

Please join us on April 2nd from 5:30 to 9:30pm for the opening reception of Joy Brown's "Clay: A Way of Life". Light refreshment and drinks will be served.

Working with clay has been a way of life for the artist Joy Brown for 35 years. Her figurative sculpture has a universal quality, touching us with a grounded down- to- earth element as well as a warmth and lightness of being. The Japanese influence in her work reflects her early life in Japan and the rigorous discipline of a traditional apprenticeship in pottery.

Joy Brown fires a year's worth of work during a week-long, 24 hour a day process in a 28 foot long Japanese style anagama wood-firing kiln. This process results in the warm, rich earth colors, and rugged textures that are an integral part of her sculpture.

“Remember what it feels like to squish mud between your toes? Pack mud pies... or dig in the warm sand at the beach? It is this feeling I have when my hands are in wet clay. It is the source of creativity for me. The dialog begins between me and the clay. Forms emerge. Ideas arise…,” Brown explains.

The feeling of pleasure Brown describes as the source of her creativity becomes tangible in her ceramic sculpture. “Clay: A Way of Life” which features ceramic wall pieces, large and small figures, and a selection of her 108 Dancing Ladies. The dancing ladies are 16” tall, skirted ceramic figures demonstrating a variety of dance moves. The quiet expression on the figures faces lends seriousness to their hands-over-the head hip swaying postures. “I love the idea that the parts of this piece, like us may be spread far and wide, in time and space, but are all connected and dancing as part of the celebration,” Brown added.

Brown grew up in Japan and recounts a memory of snow falling on temple grounds in a remote mountain village on New Year’s Eve when she watched and listened to a monk ring the temple bell 108 times, an annual ritual for hundreds of years to cleanse the spirit and welcome in the New Year. That distant memory from 35 years ago when Brown was an apprentice in a pottery in the Japanese mountains of Wakayama, came back to inspire the magic number of one hundred and eight dancing ladies.

Trained in Japan as an apprentice under the tutelage of a 13th generation master of wood firing, Brown has been firing her traditional Japanese wood fired kiln in South Kent, Connecticut for over 20 years. Brown’s sculptures have been exhibited in galleries and museums in the U.S., Europe and Asia and featured in the New York Times, Art News, Ceramics Monthly and House and Garden.