My parents are big into native american vessels. Growing up we had an entire room filled with pieces that were woven, clay, leather, you name it. When I saw Rina Peleg’s work I was immediately brought back to time in our TV room – the only room where things in our house were kept behind glass cases.
Those are woven. I can’t even fathom how she does this. When you think about how quickly clay dries and then how brittle it becomes? I just can’t imagine how she does these and keeps them looking so so even and perfectly spherical.
Beautiful – like woven snow. Rina was born in 1940 in Israel and grew up in a Kibbutz with her parents who she refers to as “intense” in her bio – I love that.
With this image you can see how she really makes the clay look like plant parts often used to weave baskets. I wonder if she makes these over armatures in order to work faster.
I love how she ties her work with clay back to the land and history. As she points out in her bio, clay is what is often used to date buildings and artifacts and tie them to the people that were around at the time. It’s a huge contextualizer for our shared history – it’s interesting to me that she chose a US flag to make. It’s at once permanently frozen in that shape while also being extremely fragile.
This color, this orange-y red is my new favorite color this season so I had to include more of it. This close up too begs the question if, when the pieces are fired if they shrink and what her loss rate is like. Maybe she just lets them air dry without firing…can you do that?
So so beautiful, perfect, and regular – my favorite, and monochrome, even better.
Tags: artists, basketry, clay, Israel, monochrome, weaving