About the Artist
Heather Ossandon creates ceramics that reflect her distinct background. Throughout her career, she has traveled through Asia, Central America, Europe, and the United States exploring and researching ceramics. These experiences have cultivated techniques and methods that are incorporated into her studio practice. Focusing on functional pottery and sculptural still lifes, traditional practices and everyday objects take the spotlight of her work. Ossandon creates and lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and is a Professor of Art at Prince George’s Community College in Maryland. She has shown her artworks both nationally and internationally and is represented by M.T. Burton Gallery, New Jersey.
The Dinner Party in Du Pont Dining Room
Dishes with printed and painted decoration often encapsulate imagery of an idealized vision, a moment, or historical dramas. They are forever a curious and complicated object that exemplify the nuance of class, society, consumption, but also utility, ubiquity, and charm. Pink transfer-printed dishes adorning a pine cupboard that Henry Francis du Pont credited as inspiration for beginning a collection became the starting point for the “The Dinner Party” installation.
The details of the miniature narratives found on these pink ceramics such as Abbey Ruins, European Landscape, and Willow Pattern were used to create a newly formed ceramic assemblage. The motifs and imagery that pepper the table create a playful vision of that stretches somewhere between the 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional world. The assemblage was intended to be a puzzle of sorts, inviting the viewers to dissect and discover objects hidden within.
Read more about Heather’s previous installation at Winterthur.