Fossil forms

1988

Barbara found the inspiration for her Fossil forms in Cappadocia, a chalk-white Turkish landscape with dwellings hewn from the cliffs and weather-eroded masses of rock.

“The barrenness, the monochrome quality, the purity appealed to me enormously. These impressions led to unglazed, turned pots and vases, which were circumvented with rope, causing bulges to arise between the constrictions. This was the beginning of the series of Fossil forms, which emerged from a sort of spiral shape. First the cylinder of wet clay, wrapping a rope around it and then turning the clay outward through the pressure of my hands. In a subsequent phase I cut out the bottoms and laid these turned forms on their sides, so that a pot or vase became a free object.”