Artist Statement

My relationship with objects is connected to how I interpret the body, the emotional self, and human consciousness. I aim to provoke the viewer to consider their own relationship between the objects and themselves.

I make work to connect with others, and to create an intimate experience between the viewer and the work; something similar to the intimacy formed between two people. Vulnerability is one way in which I choose to connect. I open myself up to the audience, through the work. I confide in the work and the work whispers subtlety to viewer.

 Visually, I am drawn to organic and vaguely figurative forms…body as an object that has a relationship with the other bodies and objects around them. This begins my practice, often starting with process oriented craft techniques. I then fuse these products with experimental materials and forms that seem to have an emotive quality that I relate to. I trust intuition and improvisation, and rely on spontaneity to challenge my own aesthetic and emotional sense. Materials I choose may start as formal decisions, but also must have meaning, concept, and/or inherent cultural signifiers. The pieces are thus imbued with their own unique appeal…vulnerable yet unafraid. Mundane objects now become important amongst the crafted material as metaphor for the creative meeting the banal.

 By turning the dials just so, my work asks the viewer how we relate to each other; what can we do to see our interconnectedness with each other and the objects around us; and how does this piece relate to us physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Inviting the viewer to interact and bond with my work is quite intimate and exhilarating. I find that this notion…this fantasy…of engaging intimately with my viewers, their bodies and minds, drives my work in the studio effortlessly.

Bio

Tabatha Trolli is an artist working primarily in the mediums of ceramics and sculpture. She received a BFA in Ceramics at Temple University, Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and an MFA in Ceramics at The University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. As an active artist making functional ceramics and sculpture as well as painting and photography, she has exhibited in galleries and craft shows nationally since 2010. Her functional practice has evolved alongside her sculptural practice, and usage and aesthetics combine to create work that is at ease in the hand, visually rich, and takes its cues from myriad visual sources. In her most recent body of functional ceramics, the Japanese Nerikomi tradition of marbled, colored porcelain is providing great formal influence along-side the continued exploration of marking clay in all stages, plastic to fired ceramic surface. 

Along with a rich studio practice, Tabatha has been an instructor of Ceramics, Sculpture and three-dimensional design at the university level across north Texas and has experience teaching in K-12 and community art centers. Her ceramics practice is necessarily informed by her passion for spreading interest in ceramics in her chosen community. Currently, she is an Adjunct Lecturer of art at SMU’s Meadow School of the Arts, as well as the Ceramics and Glass Studio manager and instructor at the Creative Art Center of Dallas. Trolli’s work has been published in Pottery Making Illustrated and the recent book by Antoinette Badenhorst, Working with Porcelain. 

Tabatha currently lives in Dallas, Texas. 

Her website can be found at www.tabathatrolli.com