Artist Statement

My handbuilt ceramics include sculptural vessels, wall tiles, and artist books, their surfaces marked with tools, pencils, slips, glazes and iron toner prints. Some pieces include paper inserts, and the versos of the porcelain books are my prints or drawings on rag paper. My pieces are visual, tactile, intimate and personal.

Imagery of writing and maps is central to my work, expressing messages that may be variously interpreted or understood depending on context. I use maps as diagrams of both certainty and doubt, pointing to where we think we are and to the biases, hopes and fears underlying that assumption. I intersperse them with scribbles, texts and graffiti, often faded and fragmentary, palimpsests of color, shape and meaning attacked by time.

Bio

Kanika Sircar has degrees in English and Anthropology. As an artist, she was taught by Leonard Baskin and Sam Gilliam, and came to ceramics via Margaret Boozer and Bob Devers. She shows her work regionally and nationally. Her studio is located in Washington DC, NW.