Artistry
Out of Africa
Westport-based ceramic artist Lauren Kaplan looks to her South African roots with sculptural works that capture the essence of her homeland. can take Lauren Kaplan out of Africa, • You but you definitely can’t take Africa out of Lau-
ren Kaplan. Drawing from her colorful upbringing in Johannesburg, South Africa, Kaplan, who now lives in Westport, hand-molds large- and small-scale decorative vessels composed of stoneware, raku, and porcelain clays, using the African bush and its teeming wildlife as her muses. In homage to her birthplace, Kaplan often accents her pieces with found objects from nature—twigs here, fibers there—and uses several different firing techniques to create vastly dissimilar bodies of work. Kaplan’s sculptural raku pottery closely parallels the texture of an elephant’s skin, her porcelain items take on distinct zebra stripes and cheetah-like markings, her pit-fired vessels look as if they’ve been recovered from an archaeological dig in the Kalahari, and her stoneware sculptures resemble tribal artifacts.
Kaplan’s education and interest in ceramic arts began more than thirty years ago. “I started ceramics just as a hobby and passion,” says Kaplan, who initially learned to make quarter-inch-thick slab pots from a private instructor. “I’d wait for them to dry to a certain degree and then I’d cut them up and start drawing in corners and doing curves,” she adds. In 1997, her husband’s work required the couple’s move to Zurich, Switzerland. There they remained until 2001, when Laurence’s job took them to the United States. A home with proximity to both Stamford and New York City was important, and a friend suggested Westport for its rich history as an artist’s colony. Kaplan indeed found a home she loved in the picturesque town, and the family settled in. All was well—until September 11 and the terrorist attack that destroyed New York’s World Trade Center. Thrown for a loop like so many others, Kaplan found herself
A trio of Zig Zag bowls, wheel-thrown and fired using the naked raku technique, 11"H × 9"W, 9″H × 7″W, and 10″H × 8″W.
| By Allegra Muzzillo | 28 New England Home Connecticut | Fall 2017
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Photography by Carmine Picorello
9/19/17 3:55 PM