FIRE SCULPTURE | STATEMENT
In 2022, Kadri Pärnamets’ Choreography of Water was exhibited at Ferrin Contemporary in North Adams, MA. The solo exhibition cast the gallery in a sea of hand-built porcelain cups, vases, and cloud forms to explore earth’s most precious resource: water. Now in 2024, Kadri Pärnamets has returned to this idea of water through small-scale ceramic wave studies and her newest and largest endeavor to date: a 7+ foot fire sculpture. This fire sculpture was fired via “petal kiln”– a stand-alone, reusable kiln designed to open like flower petals – fabricated by friend and master kiln-maker, Andres Allik. The monumental work was crafted and unveiled in its final form at Guldagergaard’s Summer festival, Claytopia, in July, 2024. Having displayed a fire sculpture made by Kadri’s husband, Sergei Isupov, years prior, the Claytopia team approached Kadri in 2023 to commission one of her own. Normally working in porcelain, slip, and glaze on smaller scales, the fire sculpture differed greatly from Kadri’s past works. The sculpture was built using stoneware clay, which includes higher amounts of grog (raw, crushed materials containing silica and alumina), resulting in a more rough, textured medium. As it fired, the clay shrunk more than 10%, and any glazes applied to the clay body produced darker hues than when applied to porcelain. The changing and precarious nature of these materials added numerous unpredictable factors, which were only disclosed upon removal from the kiln. These factors directly connect to the larger ideas behind Kadri’s past work: testing life’s constant, unpredictable ups and downs and how we move through and with them. As Kadri contemplates this body of work and what it means to her, she considers the physical and figurative flows of energy and matter in her personal life, her creative process, and the greater push and pulls occurring in the world:
The fire sculpture was built on-site, in situ, at Guldagergaard over multiple days. The Guldagergaard grounds became her studio, with the sculpture exposed to nature’s changing conditions. The bulbous, biomorphic contours Kadri included in the fire sculpture form referenced motifs seen on her cups, vases, and cloud forms. She also included geometric gestures through the middle of the piece to represent the coalescence of sea to sky, and the abrupt clashes and waning between waves. As she composed her fire sculpture, Kadri expected the contours, ideas, and intentions to shift as she worked. She had to work quickly, engaging her full strength of skill and technique to problem solve as the material dried and reacted to its outdoor environment. This unpredictability informed and dictated how the piece would evolve in its physical qualities, in conversation or contradiction with the forms Kadri imagined in her mind. She encourages the viewer to contemplate their own moments of change, grounding forces, melodies and harmonies in their own lives.
