Nell Devitt:
I make smoke fired, clay tile wall installations. Some tiles originate as pencil drawings and others have evolved from direct experience with the clay. The different image ideas have grown from both work flow methods and are similar because of choices made to eliminate non essentials. Using abstraction to find the core of an idea, my main focus is to create wall installations of black clay tiles with minimal images that are strong, unique and made within the parameters of a single smoke firing.

These clay tiles are made by hand using a slab roller. A template is then pressed into the clay to produce the basic pattern. Textural detail is added by incising, carving and scraping. A clay slip is applied to areas for the semi-gloss surface. The black color and straw marks are the result of a post-firing technique of smoking. When the clay reaches maturation temperature in the kiln, the tiles are individually removed with a pair of tongs and placed in a closed reduction chamber full of straw. The straw ignites, oxygen is cut off, carbon molecules enter the clay - the tile is changing. This technique produces the highly irregular, imperfect and uneven surface.

Red Dot