Slip Casted Modular Bowl, 2023

Porcelain casting slip, colored porcelain, underglaze, and glaze. Oxidation fired to cone 5

7 3/4 x 7 1/4 x 3 1/2 inches

Fair Market Value: $200

Starting Bid: $140

Buy It Now: $300

SARA ALFIERI is from Lincoln, Nebraska and currently pursuing an MFA in ceramics. By using old and new mechanisms of working, digital fabrication in tandem with hand-built vessels allows her work to highlight resistances while finding ways to connect their potentials. The processes within her work remain critically important; its qualities are intrinsic to the expression of the object. Questioning the traditional method for mold-making used in industrial production, Alfieri seeks variety within her work. This sense of variety can be found through a modular mold system in which she deconstructs and reassembles mold parts produced from computer-aided design (CAD) developed prototypes. This, along with her colored slip application on plaster molds allows for variation in both form and surface. Moving from a digital to a physical space has allowed Alfieri to develop a duality of languages that can be translated to her designed pots. In short, Alfieri believes the pot exists beyond its purpose of utility. Through her most recent means of making, she is able to design and produce pots that investigate this idea. Pottery is meaningful in the way it allows for both personal expression and proximity between object and user. Alfieri is interested in pottery as an ingress to an experience. A pot solicits interaction, not just viewing. The meaning of a pot changes through experience, gaining content through use. By exploring the intersections between craft and design, she hopes to enhance the art and act of dining with a sense of complexity and intention in each piece's form and surface.