Felt + Ceramic - Sarah House
Unearthly Grove, Sarah House, 2024.
In Semester 2 of MFA, the critical frameworks I have been researching include material-based and affective approaches, exploring how touch, emotion, and sensory perception can communicate what is often unspoken. I want examine embodied experience and the complexities of healing through material hybridity. To investigate these ideas, I experiment with combining materials such as epoxy clay, silicone, and fabric with felt to evoke contrasts in texture and sensation.
Recommended by my former ceramics teacher, Lauren, because of my previous interest in ceramics and my recent development in felt, I began researching the artist Sarah House, who also integrates these materials to create sculptural forms.
House’s practice investigates systems of interconnection in nature. Drawing visual inspiration from the relationships between life and landscape, she creates abstract sculptures and installations that feel both familiar and ambiguous. The intention of her work is to invite viewers to imagine a root system, a reef, or a living being, and to find a sense of connection. Her artistic inquiry shares affinities with my own, as I explore the tension between pain and renewal through abstract forms that echo the body, sensation, and nature—appearing both resonant and alien. Similarly, my work seeks to encourage viewers to find resonance and connection through their own bodily sensations and experiences.
Lamellae porcelain and glaze 2, Sarah House
I am particularly drawn to the forms and colors in Sarah House’s sculptures. Her forms often have fluid, organic, and soft qualities, yet are created with a hard material like ceramic. This contrast gives her works a sense of movement and vitality — as if they are living and breathing, which is an effect I also seek to achieve in my own sculptures.
In terms of color, House uses a limited and delicate palette of soft pastel tones such as lilac, white, coral and purple, or sometimes simply white. I resonate with this restraint, as I also tend to work with a limited color palette, though mine often involves stronger contrasts and more saturated hues to evoke deeper emotional intensity. When House works in only white, she emphasizes form, shadow, and spatial relationship, using an ultramarine colored wall instead of white to make the sculpture stand out visually — a choice I find both aesthetically striking and conceptually effective. The quiet elegance and captivating quality of her work make me want to explore ceramics again.
House, Sarah. “Sculpture.” Sarah House Ceramics (website). Accessed October 7, 2025. https://sarahhouseceramics.com/sculpture/
