HSC&A / Gina Zycher
Gina Zycher
It's Stuck in My Head
2024
Wheel-thrown stoneware vessel with porcelain inlay
9.5 x 10 inches
Since childhood, repetitive, rhythmic activities such as doodling, stringing beads, knitting, and washing dishes have served as a distraction from artist, Gina Zycher’s overactive mind. In 2014 when she discovered clay, it became her place of reprieve and rumination. Her process of adding inlay patterns to her vessels involves meticulously hand-carving designs into leather-hard clay, filling the negative space with soft porcelain, and scraping the surface to an even finish once a piece has further dried.
While artists like Zycher often obsess on details such as these, they also achieve a freedom by allowing the material and repetitive mark-making to guide their process. Her newest collection of ceramics, I Forgot Where I Was Going With This, implies a fraught yet fruitful forgetting, where intense focus gives rise to an organic unfoldment rather than a linear predetermined outcome. The full collection will be available exclusively through HSC&A starting Sunday, October 27th at 8 AM PT on hannahsloan.com.
I started working with clay ten years ago and quickly discovered it was a rare activity that helped quiet my mind in a more profound way than anything else. It wasn't long before I started carving or otherwise creating patterns in my pieces as a soothing, repetitive undertaking. But I also find it tedious and frustrating, not to mention that the whole art of ceramics is fraught with anxiety. Will this crack? Will the glaze turn out okay?…
Somehow, I've found a way to simultaneously soothe and exacerbate my anxiety.
- Gina Zycher
/ About the Artist
Gina Zycher received a BA in American Studies and a BA in Film Studies from University of California, Davis in 2002. Her passion is ceramics, which she discovered in 2014. She has taught handbuilding and wheel throwing at Still Life Ceramics in Los Angeles from 2018 to the present. Her work has been exhibited at commercial galleries such as Giant Robot and Craig Krull Gallery as well as the Craft Contemporary museum in Los Angeles.
