Do you remember when you touched clay for the first time? In your brain you pictured a “mug” but when your hands started working, it was a a bumbling mess and struggle to understand the foreign material’s properties. The pictured “mug” felt so close and then immediately far away. That shocking moment of realization is a palpable and vast understanding of craft – and you will never get that remarkable feeling back in that same intensity. Sarah Pschorn‘s work seems to chase that moment in all of its exciting, frustrating, curious, naive, uncomfortable, ugly – glory.

Pschorn explains her work: “I think of my work as a statement in favour of sweetness and sentimentality. A playful discovery of the space in between joy and melancholia”

Sarah Pschorn, the digital truth, 2015, 4 pieces; each around 35 cm high, porcelain, plaster, PLA-plastic, Photo: Jakob Adolphi

Pschorn’s work is rooted in curiosity, so much so that it feels like when she begins to gain skill around a certain technique, she quickly diverts her attention to a brand new method forcing her back to a beginner skill level. This imagined continuous diverting blankets her work with a remarkably consistent low level of craftsmanship which becomes much of her art’s identity. The “bad” pots are successful and her biggest threat is getting better at any one technique. She is, of course, an incredibly skilled artist exemplifying competence in techniques like mold-making, 3D prototyping, wheel throwing, and more.

There are feminist undertones in the work exploring the challenges of modern female identity and the conventions that sometimes drive it. The work touches on conventions of body image, appearance, and actions.

“The vessels… remind the spectator of female bodies that have been dressed up. The colours highlight – in a favourable or unfavourable way – as well as hide, dissolve or round the shape of my works and thus resemble items of clothing that establish different and diverse relationships with the body they dress.”

Sarah Pschorn is a ceramic artist based in Leipzig, Germany. Follow her work on Instagram here!

Sarah Pschorn, just the 2 of us, 2015, 2 pieces, porcelain, glass, 35 and 50 cm high, Photo: Jakob Adolphi

Sarah Pschorn, styrocut#2, 2015, 3 pieces; between 30 and 45 cm high, porcelain, Photo: Jakob Adolphi

Sarah Pschorn, ​I love william, 3 pieces, 30-50 cm high, porcelain, gold, Photo: Jakob Adolphi

Sarah Pschorn, material girl 2, 4 pieces, around 40 cm high, porcelain, gold, platin, plastic, glass, find, Photo: Jakob Adolphi

Sarah Pschorn, nature, 2 pieces around 55 cm high, clay, porcelain, tin, platin, metall, Photo: Jakob Adolphi

Sarah Pschorn, Exhibition view, Diploma Exhibtion COPY&PASTE, 2015, old library Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design

Sarah Pschorn, nineteen nights in Triptis, 2016, Photo: Guido Werner

Sarah Pschorn, o.T., 2016, Photo: Guido Werner

Sarah Pschorn, First Contact, 2017, Installationsansicht Franz-Flemming-Straße, Leipzig
Photo: Jakob Adolphi