About
“I aspire to a quality of stillness in my work and as the years have passed the vessels tend to be increasingly simple. As I work in visual conversation with things in the natural world and with feelings, I am trying to imbue the works with a sense of lightness, stillness and poise.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST, BY ROSE SHAKINOVSKY
“Katherine Glenday’s vessels defy stereotypical classification. They embody form and function, sacred and profane. They are symbols and metaphors while maintaining their implicit function as containers of air, of liquid, of sound and of silence. The clay that forms the translucent and transparent skin between the material and the immaterial. The primordial clay and the human potential to form, transform and communicate.
Katherine’s fine technical skill and ability to subtly manipulate and collaborate with her medium constantly leads her to explore the metaphysical implications of each individual form and the series it belongs to.
When encountering her work for the first time what strikes one is a sense of stillness, refinement and grace. The meditative pieces each with their own unique resonating sound and purity of form evoke a sense of clarity, simplicity and inner peace.
Katherine’s work however defies being purely essentialist, platonic and rarified, as there are parallel series that speak of fallibility, insecurity, confusion and suffering.
These forms spring out of spontaneity and chance, where the material itself suggests and inspires the direction the transmutation will take. To spill, to splash, to collapse are natural movements and sentiments.
Katherine’s desire to extend this personal dialogue even further and allow it to develop into a collaborative and collective experience is to regain the true spirit of art.”
– November 2008
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
- Clay Formes, Olivia Barrell, 2023
- Black Moth, Katherine Glenday, artformes.com
- Porcelain and Bone China, by Sasha /Vardell. Crowood Press, UK 2003 / UK 2020
- Craft Art in South Africa, Creative intersections, Elbe Coetsee, Johnathan Ball Publishers 2015
- Art South Africa, This personal and this particular by Ashraf Jamal. Volume 12 / June 2014
- Cape Times, March 2014
- Opening the Treasure Chest of SA Ceramics, Art South Africa By Wendy Gers. Volume 10 Winter 2012
- American Craft, May 2010, The Wide World of Craft, Cape Town by Fraser Conlon.
- Musings on Land and Material Culture, 2006
- Writing in Light, Wilma Cruise, June 2003 in Ceramics, Art and Perception. Sydney Edition 57, September 2004 (photographs by Doreen Hemp and Peter Maltby.)
- Craft South Africa, Sellschop, Goldblatt and Hemp Macmillan 2002
- Craft Art in South Africa, E. Coetsee Struik Publishers 2002
- Contemporary Ceramics in South Africa, Cruise and Hemp. Struik/Winchester 1991