By Daniel Schular
The Scene staff
Kristen Morgin’s clay sculptures must be handled with care. Otherwise, they might fall apart.
That’s because the Los Angeles-based artist doesn’t fire her sculptures. She lets them dry on their own.
“I had expected to fire them,” she said. “(But) the longer I had them in my studio, the more I was sort of convinced that it looked like this really fragile thing, and maybe it would be more honest if it was more fragile.”
Morgin, 50, visited the Forest Park campus last week to give a lecture and lead a workshop on unfired clay sculptures in the Art Annex.
She specializes in a style called “trompe-l’œil,” which is French for “deceive the eye.” It refers to artwork that is so realistic, images of objects look three-dimensional.
Morgin’s sculptures depict everything from album covers, books and musical instruments to vehicles, toys and even cigarette packs. Many are painted.
“The stuff that she made, I thought that they were actually real objects, and they weren’t,” said Samantha Gilmore, 22, an applied math major who attended the workshop. “It was pretty interesting to see the things. There were objects that I’d never imagine (could be) made out of clay.”
Morgin taught ceramics at California State University, Long Beach for 10 years before becoming a full-time artist.
She participated in the third World Ceramic Biennale in Icheon, South Korea, and has displayed pieces in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the UCLA Hammer Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
“We bring in visiting artists every semester,” said Forest Park ceramics professor Matthew Issacson.
He invited Morgin after meeting her at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. He had landed a fellowship to study there during a sabbatical.
Morgin was the recipient of the Voulkos Visiting Artist Fellowship, a very competitive award.
“Ceramics students wanted her to come (to Forest Park),” Issacson said. “Some specifically were trying to mimic the style of trompe-l’œil. Kristen is a master of trompe-l’œil, so that was an opportunity for students to learn from her and learn these techniques.”
Morgin started making sculptures with unfired clay as a graduate student at Alfred University School of Ceramics in Alfred, New York.
She liked the fact that they were fragile and not necessarily permanent.
“It’s a kind of metaphor for mortality,” she said. “All things are mortal. We all have this unspoken timeline. We all know we’re going to die, but we don’t think about it ever.”
Another workshop student at Forest Park was Will Eder, 25, a biotech major. He found Morgin to be inspirational.
“I really like the concept of using unfired clay, using that with glue (and) wire instead of the more classical way of using clay that I’ve always learned,” Eder said, “Being able to work alongside a prominent artist like that was really helpful.”