Isys Hennigar

Through ceramics and metal, my work invokes real and reimagined ecological encounters that underscore transformation, hybridity, and play as tools of renewal. Braiding forms and imagery from agricultural practice, myth, and medicine, the work considers systems of sustenance and healing and the cultural and ecological legacies of land cultivation.

Rooted in the vivid agricultural landscape of the Southeastern U.S.—one of both abundance and precarity, humid air, and fermenting fruit—the work presents dreamlike chimeric objects in which allegories of sustenance, danger, and purification merge. Working between ceramics and metal, materials bound with associations of strength and fragility, a material interplay mirrors the themes of danger and resilience within the work.

In a literal and poetic sense, vessels function as mediators in the interactions that they might symbolize or facilitate. The sculptural vessel forms I make are hand-built and adorned with relief carvings and cast details of vernacular objects such as deer hooves, peach pits, puzzle pieces, electric fencing insulators, tools, and toys. Animals are often rendered in ambiguous states of metamorphosis, hunt, or performance. The work’s colorful, layered surfaces are built through multiple firings and are often adorned with metal components.

In two-dimensional wall works, the carved porcelain imagery is mounted on brass. Employing jeweler’s techniques on a large scale, these works resemble engraved charms. Referencing historical depictions of infernal and sublime landscapes, they imagine possibilities of connection between wild and domestic realms, between chaos and play, and untamed hybrid creatures as emblems of resiliency.