MARY O’MALLEY – Bottom Feeders

And now for something completely different.  I shop everywhere, the gift show in NYC, local antique stores, the showroom I work for as well as Ebay, 1st Dibs and ETSY.  Well I was scanning ESTY for cool things the other day and came across the amazing work of Mary Malley.  um, Hello! I am crazy for these beautiful pieces.  Mary is a ceramic artist creating out of a barn on the south shore of Long Island. Her ESTY store is a dedicated to the ceramic functional wares she loves to make!  Please click over and see more of her work www.etsy.com and for additional information you can visit her website at www.maryomalleyceramics.com. Mary makes custom cremation urns, I might have to get one for myself… Not that I’ll need it anytime soon!  For more information please visit http://www.youveurnedit.com  If you have any questions or are looking for something in particular feel free to contact her at: mary@maryomalleyceramics.com

Here is her artists statement:  After receiving my BFA from The University of the Arts and living In Philadelphia I recently returned to my home near the ocean on Long Island, NY. Using my skills as a potter trained in traditional English and Japanese techniques I began to create a series of formal functional pieces to which I applied small sea creatures. The images are inspired by memories from my childhood and new familiar surroundings. Covering formal ware in crustaceans – which in real life have an unforgiving ferocity – has interested me because it is a reminder that no matter how much we try to control the creation of what we think is beautiful, uncontrollable forces like nature usually end up taking over. What truly excites me (and keeps me needing to make more) is marrying my love of functional porcelain pottery and a whimsical (or ferocious?) underwater world that mars the formality of each piece. The journey I take in deciding how to incorporate and compose these underwater elements with the service ware it is enveloping is what makes each piece completely unique. In the end one type of beauty is made more beautiful by co-existing with its foil, resulting in two completely different aesthetics existing harmoniously as one piece.