After viewing an exhibit on maps at the Los Angeles Central Library, Background Painter and Color Designer Rachel Verity started thinking about how art is used to chronicle flora and fauna. At the time, she was taking regular walks in L.A.’s Elyria Canyon, photographing plants and birds. “I was so inspired by this tiny park and all of [its] beautiful nature,” she says.
Wanting to share this experience through her art, she began the process of creating Elyria Canyon 2023 by researching and documenting. “This was completely unintentional at first,” she says, “but once I got the idea for the piece, I started making notes and figuring out what plants were blooming, which birds were flying through.”
She calls the formation of the vase “quite simple.” She used white stoneware clay to throw the form on the wheel and did extensive testing to make sure the colorants used in the underglaze would remain vibrant. “I bisque-fired the vase and took it home to sketch on and paint,” she says. “Most underglaze needs three coats to fire opaque, so it’s a lot of repetitive and detail-oriented work.” Then she re-bisque fired it to set the underglaze, following this with a black matte glaze for the interior and leaving the exterior to show off the painting.
Having worked in animation for almost a decade, Verity says pottery helped her reconnect with the joy she once felt in making art for herself. She adds: “Also, being bad at something and starting a new skillset gives you a lot of freedom to play around with ideas that might fail drastically. I spent a lot of my early years in pottery making terrible work and loved it!”
See more of Verity’s pottery at www.sunfieldpots.com and follow her on Instagram at @sunfieldpots.
