Artist Profile: Rashida Ferdinand

One of the few television programs I try and catch regularly is This Old House. I’m watching, as I write this, the last in their present series where they’ve renovated a shotgun single in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. While it’s been one of the less interesting series for the show in my opinion, I kept watching because the house was owned by a ceramic artist named Rashida Ua Bakari Ferdinand. A blurb from her vessel gallery about her process is worth reading:

I create my ceramic earthenware vessels using an Ipetumodu Nigerian coiling technique. I then apply terra sigillata, a fine particled slip to my forms to achieve a soft, colored sheen on their surface. After bisque firing, I reduce my pots with oxides, salt, and combustibles, to result in a dark, smokey pattern from the carbon reduction. My spirit vessels are metaphorical representations of bodies as objects of physical, as well as spiritual containment. The emerging and introspective faces on the vessels evoke serenity and bring spiritual peace to my work.

It’s exciting to find someone who hand-builds and uses terra sigs. This isn’t as common as ceramic artists throwing and finishing with glaze or raku firing. These kinds of finishes seem to prevail in most craft fairs and galleries lining the streets of places like Eureka Springs or Hot Springs, Arkansas. I like her sculpture, although I’m not really following her comment about “spiritual peace.” The following piece is called Beholden Vessel.

The work is 10 x 10 x 10 inches, from 2008 and made of fired earthenware clay. She also has a page on her website, Currents of Clay, detailing some of her mixed media installations. She writes this about her installations:

I work in installation to transform spaces into living environments. As extensions of my clay vessel forms, my installation works are continuances of spaces which reflect the possibilities of our inner power as human beings. My multimedia installations pay homage to my ancestors, as I seek out deeper understandings of my existence. They are my attempts to share my belief in the interconnections of all life forms and the power of God’s presence in our world.

The following installation, March of the Tapetum Lucidum, stood out among her mixed media works. It’s from 2006 and uses clay, glass mosaic and wire.

She also has galleries on the website with examples of her “tree totems” and masks. In my opinion, her vessels are the strongest works. The mixed media mixed into the tree totems seems a bit awkward, and the masks lack the visual complexity and interest of her other pieces. The vessels are very nice overall. The shapes and finishes are wonderful, and the metaphor — combining containers and faces — is strong and intriguing.