I personally didn’t have a huge interest in dolls, so the way Charlotte’s face lit up when talking about them fascinated me. She talked about an eternal love for them, even having boyfriends ask her to hide them but knowing the boys would cycle in and out but her beloved dolls would not. I grew more curious and though she teased me slightly saying there was no deep meaning she talked about her love of faces that inform all her work today and that the emotion to them holds her attention more than backgrounds or other kinds of art.

Charlotte advocated for the value and importance of typically feminine ways of creating like doll making, textile art, embroidery and more as she that it felt discouraged and looked down upon with 90s feminism devaluing “girly” things. She talked about her feeling like she should have been embarrassed by her love of dolls in her younger years and how she leaned into the idea of being an Ally McBeal type of woman. I could see the fire in her as she talked about rebelling against what she was told was stupid and embracing her love of things that have been devalued. She talked about the value of textile art and embroidery being categorized as crafts and how historically and presently it is mainly created by women thus not seen as important compared to paint or even ceramics.

Fire served as more than metaphor here as it is needed outside of Charlotte to create the art in her upcoming collection Scorched. She walked me through using fishing line in the clay to form the busk that creates the head of her pieces, that she wraps the clay to make it hallow and wrapped with copper to make unpredictable colour. She and her husband make a fire in an oil drum, and as every fire is different the results are as well. She talked about the balance of control that many artists struggle with, including deciding when a piece is done and not over working it. This firing process puts the image of the final product out of her hands.

We talked about the meaning of the scorched pieces and how the fire on the ceramic faces mimics the damage and micro traumas we all face in living life. She talked about our collective anxieties around health and purity when we all have cumulative damage and that “Life is inherently impure.” I asked about how motherhood plays into this for her, she shared the fears of her children living life. Even the process of making ceramics is harmful from working with clay from the silica to obvious risks with the firing including smoke inhalation and protecting herself and her family while it being worth the risk to create these statements. Charlotte talked about how driving cars is dangerous but we do it with seatbelts and how that mirrors the conceptualization of the show. “Safety has reasonable limits.”

You can see Charlotte’s work in person

September 2nd 2022 at the Katie and Gunner Gallery

October 6th 2022 at La Maison des Artistes

of course follow her on Instagram @ charlotte_sigurdson_art

www.charlottesigurdson.com