16 April 2012, at Montgomery County Community College, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania

Giselle Hicks is currently in residence at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia.

Giselle is interested in the transition from two-dimensional space to three and is inspired by the essential elements found in a typical household. She has worked in a relatively large scale, with arrays of smaller pieces that simulate the area represented by a bed or a window drape. She produces a lot of her work by slip casting. Sometimes the pieces are plain and decorated by scribing a drawing and filling the grooves with contrasting slip. On other pieces, she may include the decorative pattern in the mold. Some of her recent work involves large collections of flowers built up on a slip cast plinth or other structural piece.

During the day, we saw a wide variety of clever techniques used. Another form of recent interest is relatively large cylindrical pieces built up with coil. Effort is made to leave a certain subtle amount of finger marks in the surface of such pieces to convey the handmade aspect but not distract from the overall form.