Jess Kaufman Ceramics
handmade pottery celebrating eclectic and curvaceous people
Welcome
I create handmade ceramic pieces celebrating curvy and kooky people, that are equally at home on the mantle or the dinner table. Each piece, like each person, is one of a kind. Like us, my figures grow and change over time – I love iterating on my sketches, re-using them to find new life and nuances in each figure as I create new forms that reflect each model.
I’m currently making new work from my home in the Catskills, and love using local friends as my models. After a long career in performance, I’ve found energy and joy in this new way of expressing myself and celebrating bodies like mine!
I hope you enjoy looking at my work, and if you’re motivated to take a piece home, you can purchase directly from my website here or in person at the Roscoe Collective in Roscoe, NY.
Process
Portraits on Clay
I take my own hand-drawn figure sketches, and transfer them onto my wheel-thrown ceramics with a modified process of sgraffito. In traditional sgraffito, a “green” or unfired piece is coated in a layer of colored slip (liquid clay), and then the artist uses special tools to carve the slip away to reveal the clay body underneath and make a unique design. In my work, I reverse the process – I start by transferring and then carving the model onto the greenware, and then go back in with watercolor underglaze and paint in and around the carving. I love this process because it’s less precise – every work comes out a little different.
When I’m able to, I’ll do a raku or salt firing for add extra environmental effect – click on one of the collections below to learn more!