ELIZA AU

Eliza Au’s graceful work gives viewers breathing room for experiencing the spiritual. Like breath, it often suggests a kind of inhale and then exhale. There’s an equality to the curves of a line, to movement, to traveling within and around and through the piece. In her work, what might be conventionally considered “ornamental” and “structural” become one. This merging gestures toward the liminal and even the sublime.

The focus on spatiality for Au relates to the spirit. Her sculptures may offer “an abstract kind of representation of a sacred space or the feeling of it. For example, churches have arches and ambulatory spaces such as hallways, so there’s repetition. I create that kind of experience on a smaller scale.” Abstraction and a geometric aesthetic gesture toward infinity and ideas of utopia. The literal earthiness of clay and the digital technology of design and repetition create a meditative effect, evoking notions of purity and divinity—a kind of refuge from chaos, everyday life, and the messiness of the mortal psyche.

Her sculptures occupy space through the elegant creation of pattern, repetition, and mirroring. The armatures that she creates by incorporating computer-aided design into her practice make negative space as captivating as the crafted matter of wireframe and clay. The viewer’s imagination has a field of play in multiple dimensions. The relative fragility of the material heightens the experience of delicacy.

Regardless of the technology, making objects and materials can seem like spellwork. Magic has rules, limits, recipes, and designs. Clay is a medium of transformation. Au is engaged in the work of enchantment and recalls the saying, “If you know how it’s done, it’s science. And if you don’t know how it’s done, it’s magic.” She sees science and magic as “two sets of mystery,” and her design is informed by “mindfulness, a kind of meditation, and a kind of self-centering.” She says, “If I can pull the viewer into that kind of mindset, it is also like a type of enchantment.”

For all clay artists, working with the medium is technically challenging. Au mentions its fragility and strengths: “[Clay] dries relatively fast; the more dry it is, the more easy it is to break. When it’s wet, it’s stronger because of the pores of the clay. I think the challenge is part of the process. If I did sculptures out of a medium that is easier to work with, it would read really differently, such as plastic versus clay. So I think for ceramic artists, [we experience] an element of wonder when someone does something technically difficult. This is actually part of my interest in challenging myself; I feel that there always has to be something hard to do, which drives you forward.”