I came across Stephanie Craig’s ceramic sculptures in college when researching artists who worked in altered forms and unique finishes. Her series Specimen Collection also peaked my interest because of it’s play to cabinets of curiosities. Their forms and surfaces play immediately on the desire to look, collect and categorize. They way she presents them, little collections in lined wood cases, gives a wonder sense of a museum specimen. It’s pseudo-scientific but plays on notions of value and artifact in such a wonderful way. You can’t help but to want to touch them, hold them close in hand and inspect their surface and wonder about their story and history. All that genuine sense of the real and sense of awe comes from a manufactured clay object. Those forms, surface and presentation truly make you question where those impulses come from.
How could you not want to touch them and understand where they came from. The combination of uniqueness and the unknown, drives the impulse to understand, to collect and organize. On display it truly looks a collection from a small museum, put out for guests to observe and wonder.