WOMAN: I think there'’s a lot of power
in the shadowy side of things,
and I don'’t shy away from it at all.
I happen to be in a less dark place in my life right now,
but I'’ve been through plenty of dark places
and really used art to explore those places.
I make human and animal figures
with a psychological stance and a dash of humor.
SARSON: Sara Swink'’s ceramic sculptures
can be visual juxtapositions,
almost familiar creatures
reminiscent of a dream or a half-forgotten nightmare.
SWINK: My work comes out of my own psyche,
and it comes through a process that I use,
starting with collage and sometimes involving doodling,
sketching, and then making the piece in clay.
SARSON: The process invites ideas from her unconscious
up into view.
Then she chooses how to work with them.
SWINK: It'’s like an unlearning process
to get out of the way.
There is a thread and there is a narrative.
It'’s like my life narrative is coming forth in the clay.
And if I just stay out of the way and let it come forth
and not judge it, then it will keep going.
Judgment stops the process cold.
So that is a practice.
That'’s a real everyday practice, to suspend judgment,
let the ideas just flow, and go with where the energy is.
I think my style could be described
as almost folk-arty,
sort of folk art from the culture of me.
There'’s thought in it, but for me,
it'’s much more how it feels.
And if I can'’t make a decision about how I want it to look,
I picture how I'’d want it to be if I kept it in my own bedroom.
That'’s -- that'’s what makes a lot of decisions for me.
What I do is I get a big stack of magazines,
usually some "National Geographics" in there
and some art magazines and things that have
really high-quality photography.
And I go through and I just look for things that grab me,
that pick me, in a way.
This is one of my image journals,
and here are some of my images.
The way that I'’ve broken this up into chunks,
these images go together,
and there'’s usually some kind of association between them.
And so I like to write notes
about what those associations might be,
and then sketches start to happen.
So here is a sketch of a girl sitting in a chair
holding a house, and that'’s inspired by these girls --
these women -- holding houses.
But the house is on fire.
Where the fire came from, I don'’t know,
but that became a piece.
[ ♪♪ ]
So this is a really important part of the process for me.
So that'’s kind of the fun, is finding images
that already have meaning and have interest,
and then combining them in new ways
and then giving myself this resource library
full of ideas and imagery I can draw off of forever.
SARSON: Next, a sketch that will probably become a piece.
She'’s still exploring, but this time with pen and paper.
Here'’s the wolf'’s head, and it'’s holding this book,
"How to Train Your Dog."
And so that is the beginning of working out this idea
of doing a bust of the dog holding the book.
One of the ideas that I seem to come back to over and over again
is the instinctual versus the domestic.
So a wolf, in this case I combined
with this other picture...
and it just occurred to me, I think,
after I put this book together is when it occurred to me.
Here'’s someone reading a book with a dog on the front,
and I thought, well, this would be --
the wolf reading the book "How to Train Your Dog."
And that'’s about the danger of the wolf
losing its instinctual nature.
This is a maquette.
And "maquette" is a French word for "model."
And it just means a sketch.
It'’s a sketch done in clay.
As I'’m going, I'’m feeling.
How do I feel when I look at the piece?
Is it capturing the essence of something pleasing to me?
And in this case, it was.
It captured the gesture I wanted really well.
Even, actually, better than the maquette,
because there'’s a little bit more of the leaning into it
that I could do on a larger scale
than I could with the smaller one.
[ ♪♪ ]
Adding color is when it all comes together.
It'’s when the vision really starts to happen,
because so many of these pieces, like this one,
are so much about the color.
When the clay is wet, it'’s beautiful by itself.
When it dries, it'’s less beautiful.
When it'’s bisque-fired, its first firing,
it'’s probably at its homeliest.
What we have to do is bring back the color to it
to make it beautiful again,
which is a very challenging process.
It'’s very easy to go wrong with glazing.
I'’m looking at the brush strokes and thinking about
whether I want them to show up or not.
I might do a little bit of this to blend them out if I want to,
and I'’m layering the colors.
So I first did red and then orange and now a yellow-orange
to get really rich, deep colors.
I don'’t like my pieces highly finished.
I like to have pieces that have my mark on them,
that have hand marks on them
that aren'’t perfect and polished.
So I know a piece is finished when it brings the idea across,
and I don'’t need to overwork it from there.
I love working with clay because it'’s malleable,
and everything I make has my mark on it,
no matter what I do.
It comes out in my style.
And that'’s just what happens with whatever we do, really.
But clay has a special way
of becoming like an extension of myself.
[ ♪♪ ]
I do think that the 6-year-old that lives in me
is the one who makes the choices about what we make next,
and I go with that.
I think she knows what she'’s doing.