On a recent trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, I came across a symbol: a circle with four arrows, each pointing outwards in each of the four cardinal directions. This symbol is an Aztec rendition of the Five Directions. The center, or the fifth direction, represents the heart of the world. This symbol was described to me as the four directions, with the addition of where you are now as the circle at its center.
This symbol serves as inspiration for this one-night event. Five Directions represents the work of five artists at different stages of their creative lives. All five met at the ceramic studio of Melissa and Gus Miranda. Gus Miranda is both teacher and connection of these individuals; he is at the center. The other four individuals are showing four other ways that one can express oneself through clay. Five artists, each expressing Five Directions, including their present physical and creative state.
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The five artists are as follows:
Macarena Carrillo is an emerging artist whose unique point of view and imagery in clay has come out fully formed. Her work commands invitation and rejection in equal doses. The forms are whimsical and familiar, yet in the most practical understanding, they repel and protect themselves. The prickly objects maintain an approachability and kindness through their playful appearance. The forms animate line and shape as an invitation to a hospitable world. Macarena takes inspiration from nature on a large and small scale: from the shapes of germs and viruses to geological formations, to the cosmos, Macarena’s work embodies the common language of structure.
Samantha Noelia Ferrer, a recent graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute with a major in Ceramics, creates work that finds its roots in Cuban culture, unresolved memories, Fauvism and the Japanese contemporary artist Aya Takano. Through this unique blend of inspiration, she has constructed a lexicon that merges three dimensional clay forms and painted imagery. The importance of paring her ceramic objects with paintings is a critical reiteration of her work. Samantha’s pieces take the viewer through the riot of color and imagery that constitute the human experience, emotion, and a deep sincerity.
Carin Ingalsbe is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University. She is a printmaker, painter and most recently, large scale photographer. The forms for this show have strict parameters that carry over from her photography. She is compelled by density of detail or imagery that will often result in unique patterns. However, her goal is to create objects that consist of more negative space than actual material. Each perforation’s shape allows the viewer to inspect what isn’t there as opposed to the clay itself. Dirt, air, thought and light; these pieces have nothingness at their core.
Anthony López lives and works his long relationship with art. He is, by day, both Graphic Designer and Art Director. Anthony’s work in clay moves seamlessly through figuration, abstraction and industrial forms. His subject matter parallels his ease of inspiration as it moves through political, social and simple, everyday human experiences. His goal is to be without artifice and wholly available to the viewer. His artistic aim is to simply engage his audience and hope that they may, in that moment, see the world as he does: perfect, flawed, skewed, kind, sometimes cruel. With each new project Anthony looks for new ways to work, understand and see.
Gustavo Miranda has been a lifelong companion to the aesthetic world. While he has tremendous experience in a variety of artistic expressions, it is ultimately clay that had informed and shaped him these last 10 years. As a clay ‘maker’, Gus is drawn to the functional and visual beauty of making utilitarian objects. He is driven by making every day pieces that fortify our lives with aesthetics as well as purpose. His sense of connection with makers of the past is in the creation of traditional forms, while still leaving room for personal expression. His is a journey through unique clay bodies, glazes and methods that serve to expand his understanding of the craft. Making with clay is a journey with a good friend to an unknown place with familiar scenery. Clay binds like people together to share their experiences along the road.

Carin Ingalsbe