16 April 2012, at Montgomery County Community College, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania

Giselle Hicks is currently in residence at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia.

Giselle is interested in the transition from two-dimensional space to three and
is inspired by the essential elements found in a typical household. She has worked
in a relatively large scale, with arrays of smaller pieces that simulate the area
represented by a bed or a window drape. She produces a lot of her work by slip
casting. Sometimes the pieces are plain and decorated by scribing a drawing and
filling the grooves with contrasting slip. On other pieces, she may include the
decorative pattern in the mold. Some of her recent work involves large collections
of flowers built up on a slip cast plinth or other structural piece.

During the day, we saw a wide variety of clever techniques used. Another form of
recent interest is relatively large cylindrical pieces built up with coil. Effort
is made to leave a certain subtle amount of finger marks in the surface of such
pieces to convey the handmade aspect but not distract from the overall form.