Leah Jensen

This vessel was built and carved in 2020 as Leah Jensen waited for a craniotomy to remove a brain tumour. This procedure held a risk of paralysis, while carving Leah wondered if this would be the last pot.

It remains forever unfinished as she ran out of time before the operation date arrived. It stayed unfired for the three years she spent in treatment and recovery. It was carefully transported through two house moves, areas of the carving damaged by the damp conditions of the flats in which Leah lived. When Leah was able to move back into a studio, finally it was fired. She did not imagine that it would survive due to all the moving around, but it did with the damage preserved.

At first glance of Leah’s work, you cannot help but delight in the sheer beauty of each form, your appreciation heightened by the illustrious exactitude of the artist’s craftsmanship. When you then discover that the origin of the carvings on each of Leah’s ceramic vessels comes from her love of Renaissance paintings, in this case Sandro Botticelli's Saint Sebastian, you realise that the work goes beyond elaborate technique. It is rich and laden with meaning and despite being clean-cut and contemporary in its form, its tendrils stretch back in time, thousands of years into the past. Leah allows the fundamental elements of her chosen Renaissance painting to dictate the final design of the pot. This is a technique that the artist developed after learning about the maths and planning some of the great masters used when considering their composition. In doing so, she unearths hidden geometric structures that reside beneath the surface of the painting. Leah maps out these patterns and forms and translates these by applying images of the painting using pins and paper on to a hand-built, unfired clay vessel, using the clay as a canvas. She then carves out these precise yet abstract patterns, creating a unique, meticulously planned contemporary object very much influenced by the past. Once the vessel is complete the narrative is hidden, just as in the geometric structure of the painting before it.