Winged Vessel

A winner of the 1998 American Crafts Council Gold Award, Karen Karnes studied ceramics at Brooklyn College and New York College of Ceramics at Alfred University. In 1952, she became a resident potter at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, and upon her return to New York in 1954, she established a studio at Stony Point. After moving to Vermont in 1979, she began working with abstracted organic forms and experimenting with wood-firing, which gave her finished pieces a muted and variegated palette. Her more recent sculptural works present a merging of both functional and abstract forms. The wood-fired Winged Vessel is a case in point. Its shape suggests a tureen with extruded handles, but in fact the object does not separate along the deeply incised central lines. This dynamic piece still retains a sense of functionality, though it is purely sculptural.