New art display brings pizzazz

Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter

 

A new display is up for the month of February at the Strathmore Municipal Library. A collection of pieces by ceramic artist Kathryn Ransom is gracing the upper shelves of the library, by the new comfy chairs, until Feb. 27.
Ransom first began working with clay after her sister introduced her to it.
“I’ve always been really interested in making things and I was working in stained glass, copper foil, which I really liked but then my sister started working in clay, so I started playing around with it and I love it, really love it,” said Ransom.
“I love the way that you can take something that is just a ball of mud and form it into something that says something or that is functional that someone can use and enjoy for years.”
Ransom also used to sew, and with her ceramic work she will often use sewing techniques to create fun and texturally interesting pieces. She uses surfaces like old doilies or linens to add texture and “in kind of a way to reuse something that someone spent an awful lot of time making, I guess appreciate it in a new way.”
“I like putting some kind of gesture in my pieces, something that makes it almost look like it is going to twirl away or going to get up,” said Ransom.
She doesn’t work the way we would imagine a typical pottery artist, using the wheel and forming her shapes from there. Instead she works with slabs of clay, rolling them out, adding her texture or designs and then cutting out the pieces. It’s then quite the process to put the piece together. She will cut a 45 degree angle on the edges of the slab and scores it. The clay must have the right amount of moisture out of it. She then puts some slip on it, liquefied claybefore putting the two sides together.
She said it can take some time to learn the art of working with the slabs, trying to determine how much pressure to use, when to stop, when to smooth something out but it also gives her an opportunity to play with shapes more than using a wheel would.
“With what I am doing I can cut out any shape, so I get a lot of inspiration from the figure and clothing, things like that. I am looking at a line that I can take and shape, so you can draw out something two dimensionally and then you put it together with another three to five sides and you get something completely different,” said Ransom.
“I love it, I think Kathy’s work is exquisite and it adds a new pizzazz to the library. Just in the (time) it has been up we have received many positive comments on her work and I’m going to have a very hard time letting it go at the end of the month,” said Carmen Erison, assistant director of library services for the Strathmore Municipal Library.
All of the pieces on display are for sale, and there is a price list available at the library. More of her work can be found on her website at kathrynransom.ca, or on Facebook under Kathryn Ransom Ceramic Art.