Artist James Marshall creates objects in clay that embody nature and beyond
ARTIST STUDIO BY WESLEY PULKKA | PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL
Poets are able to imagine motion within stone walls or mountainsides. They understand liminal form—that which is on the verge of coming into being for the observer. Contemplative ceramic sculptor and educator James Marshall works at the edge of awareness to create elegant clay forms bathed in luscious monochrome glazes that speak to the viewer’s inner being. His long-running Liminal Objects series is the result of years of experience in the arts and, more importantly for Marshall, his time spent hiking, snowshoeing, and skiing.
“The nature of the mountains is a real foundational part of my life. There’s a presence that mountains have—that quietness and solid stillness—that is a an large part of my work.”
His sculpture echoes wave forms, rock cliff edges, rolling foothills, and the things we see that are not quite in focus nor identifiable, amorphous shapes that might be ships at sea or trees along the shore or a mountain lion fashioned of logs and stone.
Marshall’s home and workshop on the far west side of Santa Fe are located along an unpaved road that snakes out toward open country. Filled with pieces both finished and in progress, his cluttered studio houses clay, powdered glazes, a large electric kiln, work tables, hand tools, and lots of shelves.
Top left: Orange #330, a glazed ceramic sculpture, explores the liminal edges of form. Bottom left: Blue #355, a contemplative sculpture of monumental size. Right: James Marshall takes a short break in his ceramics studio.
Like Henri Matisse, Marshall first studied law before turning to art. Then he took a crafts class in his senior year as an undergraduate. “It wasn’t even a fine arts course, but I tried working with clay, and that was it,” he says. “It was like waking up from a dream. I’m not exaggerating—it was profound.”
After that, Marshall went into the Peace Corps in Guatemala, where he wound up becoming a potter’s apprentice, throwing bowls for five months and working eight hours a day. He followed this experience with graduate school at the University of Michigan School of Art, where he earned an MFA and began work as an independent artist.
By the early 1990s, Marshall was showing at the Sena Galleries in Santa Fe, where he exhibited mythically inspired wood and mixed-media sculptures. It all ground to a halt in 1993.
“I was living a very one-dimensional life at that point,” he explains. “I spent every waking hour building sculpture, looking for places to show, and in general pushing myself to be successful. I finally went broke and quit the art scene.”
For the next eight years he ran a successful design studio where he completed and sold more than 130 functional objects and pieces of furniture in wood, steel, and brass. “Once I let go, I finally was making a living, and for the first time in 20 years I took vacations, went skiing, walked in the woods, had money in the bank, and had girlfriends. It was great,” he says.
In 1999 he was offered a job as lead instructor in the ceramics department at Santa Fe Community College, where he still teaches ceramics, drawing, studio practice, and three-dimensional design. “It was fun working with these high-energy students who also loved clay—but I didn’t jump right back into making art again.”
Two dreams inspired his return to the studio. “I was visiting a gallery full of really bland ceramic sculpture. As I turned to leave in disgust, I realized that I was holding a large ball of wet clay. In the second dream, I visited a show that turned out to be my work. In the center of the gallery was a four-foot-tall stylized vessel that looked like a plastic detergent bottle. It was covered with a bubblegum-pink glaze.”
Until then, Marshall had never worked with bright colors nor taken interest in industrial shapes. “I decided to let those dreams guide me, and it has turned out to be a very good decision.”
In his artist statement for the 2008 Liminal Objects solo show at Winterowd Fine Art in Santa Fe, Marshall writes: “My desire as an artist is to create beautiful objects that are a colorful presence. The essence of this work, then, is really color and light and how color and light of a form radiates into the life. What motivates me is the question: When does an ordinary object move into other dimensions? It is this ‘unidentified’ dimension of a form that intrigues me the most . . .. There is a deep beauty that resides inside of the indeterminate, the saturated Chroma, the light that radiates out into the life. A life where everything is what it is and nothing is what it seems. Where color, energy, light, and form merge into one. That is where I do my work.”
From the Spring/Summer 2011
