The Pottery Poetry

She is an artist who gives mystic shapes to the most basic elements of nature. Her work is very close to earth. Kristine Michael experiments with clay and makes tremendous sculptures out of them. She always wanted to do things with her own hands. Her works seem to be just coming out of a bards' pen.

Kristine Michael is a studio potter who has made a distinctive mark on the Indian scene. She always had the artistic zeal in her. "In school I was always interested in art. And once when I started working with clay, I wanted to go on and on," says Kristine.

This brilliant potter is a product of the prestigious National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad from where she did her Industrial Ceramic Design course in 1983. From then she embarked on an artistic journey which won her many laurels. From 1985 to 1987 she worked at Garhi studio, Delhi and had many solo and group exhibitions.

She draws inspiration from the nature - leaf, seeds and trees. Her work is unique, in fact it defines many new dimensions in pottery. Her shapes are artistic but are also mystic. Her shapes from the series Ancestral Spirits are functional and at the same time occult. It is a tribute to the spirits, wisps, memories and ghosts that have been residing in our imagination or lurking in an old guava orchard. The work is an offering to the various rites and rituals of appeasement and offering - rituals of frightening shadows and ghost stories. They even depict memories of childhood, resounding laughter, half remembered smells, slumbering days with sunlight...

Kristine often picks up a theme and works on it making a series of art pieces around that theme."I work in a series and most of them are based on a particular theme. Each piece is different. Though they are different but there is harmony among all of them belonging to a particular group," says Kristine.

One such theme is the Treasure Boxes collection. These boxes correlate the present modern India and the traditional India. In a way these boxes are symbolic of the changing times specially - in the case of women. The layer of boxes in one another reflect the guarding sense of the women who keep tradition and modernity in their layered lives.

Kristine has held many solo exhibitions and group exhibitions all over the world. She is the recipient of many awards such as Art Research Grant -2000, Nehru Trust Visiting Fellowship to the V&A museum, London and many more.

Her success as an artist involves lot of hardwork, "I work in the studio for about eight to ten hours a day. It is like normal working day in any office. And I work six days a week," remarks Kristine with a smile.

- Avni Sood