Lauries Jeanne is a ceramic artist. Jeanne’s practice centres on Autobiographical Objecthood: a framework in which the vessel and the artist undergo the same event, the clay carries the proof of it. Jeanne forms unpotes (hand built companion vessels) directly within specific environments: tidal, woodland, ecological. The landscape is not a backdrop, it is a co- author or even an author in its own right. When a river shapes a vessel, the river has made a decision. The marks left without a hand (tide impressions, bark contact, pebble drag, wave deformation) are glyphs, indexical records of a specific encounter between vessel, place and environment.
‘The oldest known fired ceramic objects have survived thirty thousand years. Every vessel I make might survive as long. That is not a grandiose claim- it is a material fact that changes everything about how I think about what I making.’ – Laurie Jeanne
Changing Environments
In the context of changing environments this record is significant. Jeanne’s current vessels are made in the ancient woodlands and tidal creeks of the Sussex High and Low Weald carry the ecological signature of this precise moment. The species present, the mineral deposits, the seasonal conditions act as a living record into deep future time.
The vessel’s biography does not end at firing. It continues through breakage, repair, and the hands and environments it enters. The record is alive and the archive breathes.
‘I am drawn to GroundWork NetWork because the questions my practice raises – about deep time, material agency, ecological authorship – deserve to be in the conversation with others asking adjacent ones.’ – Laurie Jeanne
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Instagram: @laurie.jeanne.clay
