Name: Jane Philips
Location: Boulder, UT and Missoula, MT
Medium: Clay - primarily stoneware and porcelain
Jane Philips has always been on the feral side. In her own words she was a wild kid, dirty all the time. She recalls her mother always telling her, “life is an art project!”. Jane took those words quite literally, always making things look beautiful, and always in a state of play. To this day those qualities are infused in the ceramics that she creates, and it is precisely that beauty and play that draw you into her work. When you hold one of Jane's pieces in your hands you get a sense of its character, that it has a story to tell. I believe in the energetic life of objects, and sometimes when I’m standing alone in the shop I imagine that after we’ve turned off the lights for the night, Jane’s pieces crawl down off of the table and mischievously dance around the room.
Jane grew up right here in Salt Lake City and took frequent trips with her family down to the small desert communities of Torrey and Boulder. She has always had an ongoing nostalgia for those places that she visited as a kid, and in 2017 she moved down to Boulder where she lives and works out of her studio. She originally went to school for environmental studies, and she says that her draw to working with clay comes from a place of loving earth, of being in the dirt, and of having a very somatic relationship with land and mud. Her understanding of clay comes naturally, it is a knowing, a remembering of sorts, and at times she says, borders on obsession. She’s had to reckon with the fact that a lot of the clay world is not environmentally friendly - materials are mined and gas kilns pollute just for the sake of art, and this is one of the reasons she was drawn to working with wood-fired kilns. Twice a year Jane loads her truck up with ceramics and makes the long drive up to Missoula Montana where she spends weeks prepping, loading and tending to her preferred wood-fired kiln, alongside a handful of other dedicated ceramicists.
At the end of it all she loses about 25% of the pieces that she loaded in, but what remains is pure magic.
We’re so excited to share Jane’s work with you, and we wanted to ask her a few questions about how she thinks about her work, beyond the wheel and kiln.
How would you hope having these items in someone’s home feels? What do they bring to home? I want people’s initial attraction to be what it is. I don’t want to have an influence over what they are for people. I only hope that whoever is meant to find them does, and is drawn to the pieces enough to bring them into their home. I make things for myself, and I want them to be whatever they are for other people, I send them out into the world and I’m happy for whatever they become. I truly love that people are choosing to bring something into their home that takes such a long time to create, and has such a long history.
How do ceramics influence the way you live? It’s an incredibly humbling medium. It’s really helped me with non-attachment, things break all of the time. In terms of craft, it is known to notoriously break your heart. You get one thing wrong and you can lose an entire kiln-load of work, it really teaches you how to let go. Not only do I use the clay to translate my life, it’s also an integral part of everyday life for me because it becomes something that you use. It’s kind of a constant even when I’m not making pieces, it’s always there, I’m always thinking about it. It’s very much part of how I see the world.
What’s your hope for the home environment that your pieces land in? Like your children, you hope that they’re loved for who they are. If this is the only piece that someone has that’s handmade, awesome! if it becomes a part of a collection, I love that too. I sometimes worry that because of the cost that they may not get used, my one hope is that they’re loved in a way that they’re used and they’re touched. These pieces are meant to be interacted with and loved.
Here's to more interaction and love, friends!
You can find Jane’s work here at cityhome, in our tiendita (Spanish for "tiny shop"). Come see us and take home your own piece of the magic.
