Zoë Powell was finding joy in the struggle to reach compromise with native materials, but she also found that sometimes the compromise required by the nature of these materials was too great; her forms yielded to material demands too often. Wanting to showcase the inherent grace of her forms, she proposed a body of work in unglazed porcelain, which she thought would sit in complement to her native-clay work, “highlighting my ideals of fragility and elegance in a new way.” Powell found that the funding for this research has empowered her to create harmony among her surfaces, forms, and ideas. The sculptural work Powell delivers serves as a formal exploration of human emotions. It is an attempt to visualize the intangible. Powell is a former wood-fire resident of both the Cub Creek Foundation, in Appomattox, Virginia, and Cobb Mountain Art and Ecology Project, in Northern California. She is a past Virginia Museum of Fine Arts fellowship recipient and has been awarded numerous grants for her work with native clays and wood firing. Her work has been exhibited in various galleries around the country and in 2019, she was named an emerging artist by Ceramics Monthly.
Zoë Powell
