Beth Ozarow

"Creative work functions something like a bedside dream journal for me. It's a place to welcome and contain the images that arrive in the dark, emergent. It often feels as if several parts of myself are trying to look at the same thing from different directions, trying to hold a meaningful conversation while walking towards each other on a tightwire of different languages. I aim, at that moment when these two parts meet out there in the middle of the wire, for them come to an understanding of each other that they didn't have before."

Beth's sculpture has a particular energy: it is quie;; there is a sense of stilled breath. Such moments of deep quiet, and the play of this against more dynamic forces, are the focus in much of her work. Recently, she has been using subtle gestures, specifically hand positions of holding and grasping, to explore the relationship of the body to hidden, inner aspects of spirit and the world beyond physical.

Beth generally builds her sculptures from the bottom up, using flattened coils. By pushing from the inside out she shapes her pieces, leaving working marks of joinery, fingers, and hands visible on the surface. The pieces are fired from greenware to cone 4 in a single oxidation firing. She began using acrylic paints to finish the surfaces of her work some time ago, taking great pleasure in the immediacy and flow that this medium allows.

Beth's early years as the daughter of an artist/poet mother laid the foundation for a life which holds her creative work at its center. After studying sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, Beth worked for eight years as a studio assistant to Constance Leslie, a sculptor of architectural ceramics. Her good fortune in starting studio life as an integral part of the daily creative efforts of another ceramic artist has given her a lasting, intimate connection to clay. Beth maintains a studio at sfclayworks, a cooperatively run group studio and teaching facility in San Francisco, of which she is one of eight founding members.