Barbara Sorensen continues to surprise us with her formidable ambition and talent for articulating large and looming forms of paper clay in ceramics. To me it’s an impressive sky-full of shapes! They seem balanced ambiguously, challenging gravity in defiance of an uneasy truce with nature.

She then turns to other inventions that are lacy, enveloping you, embroidering the walls and surrounding space. She also shows opposites, like sturdy juggernauts of heroic pavement stones extruding upwards and inhabiting the ground level as you walk around them. They seemingly spring from nature also and seem part of it.

Some of her sculptural explorations have a hint of the figure, which I really like. They are understated and mysterious as she continues her search in expanding her knowledge of expressive ceramics. She builds on her inventive history of clay, developing new amazing forms, textures, space, and volume relationships. My admiration grows with her tenacious and significant development in the clay medium.

Rudy Autio, American Ceramic Legend, Artist