NGAG - Skye Love

Skye Love is a twenty-one year old ceramic artist who introduced herself last November to North Georgia Arts Guild members during the monthly meeting. Her grandmother is Grandma Lee, whom the guild knows as Laura Loveless; she’s a guild member and master potter. At her urging, Skye spoke for ten minutes to the assembled artists and asked for feedback and pricing suggestions, while wondering aloud about the possibility of becoming an artist full time. With surprising skill, her works transform traditional clay shapes into worlds alive with vibrant colors. Her three dimensional designs are carefully crafted and balanced. One built-up surface represents a seabed; another, the forest foor. Richly textured sea barnacles seem wet, and there are toadstools, dragonfies, moss, clams, jellyfsh, and swirls of water. The lips of coffee cups and other edges offer pop-up surprises of their own that include snails and more toadstools. There are also fairy home coffee cups and coffee cup hobbit dwellings. These delicate objects are comfortable to feel and hold. The decoration rests on a body that is light and thin. During the interview, Skye described how she assembles these works: “I’m really good at score and slip, though here is an early work where the pieces popped off.” Scoring refers to scratching into pieces of wet clay so to join them together using a glue-like clay and water paste called slip. Frequently, she is not one to follow rules. “Don’t mix your North Georgia Arts Guild Skye Love – Detail and Color in Clay By Susan Brewer

NGAG

glazes” was suggested to her by Grandma Lee. Skye made clear the opposing view, “I like to break the rules. For instance, I broke the rules by mixing all my colors together to see what would happen. So now, I have a lot of colors. With pottery, you never know what you’re going to get… but now, I know.” She prefers doing things this way, fnding out for herself. When I suggested she seemed to have a great deal of focus, she laughed. “I’d say I’m all over the place! I have always been a person of self-expression. I think that is how (and why) I got into art. I’ve always liked doing what other people don’t do. I’ve learned to take a medium I like and bend the rules with it.” Ah, bending the rules, that’s it! As she described how her works came about, I learned that she had been working two nights a week when most of these were made. She is working three jobs now. Will that put the brakes on her work? Maybe. Her art, though, is established; it has developed deep roots early. This isn’t the result of college training. She wasn’t a fan of high school and left after two years, though later she got her GED. She traveled to New Zealand for nine months and worked as an aux pair. She’s traveled around the country and spent time with her partner Nathan in Miami. There they went snorkeling and Skye explained to me how that experience has affected her art. “It’s easy to notice texture variations of the living world. I love the weirdness. You know, I don’t believe in aliens, but the ocean to me is an alien world with so many textures and colors. It’s so artistic and beautiful—it’s perfect.” We talked for a moment about our shared concern over the dying sea and the damage mankind is doing to the planet. The truth was painful for us to think about. Skye balanced this thoughtful moment by mentioning the nature of man: facts are impossible for humans to grasp unless they are immediate, here, and impossible to ignore. That is true. Why is carbon and the impact it has upon the planet so hard to understand? What will Skye’s life face, that we’re not preparing for right now? Skye is considering a move to Asheville in a few years. She travels there a lot and is excited about the art community which is part of that scene. Currently, she lives and works in Clayton. Wish her the best! I know I do.