Isabel Rower confounds audiences with her ceramic ‘Box Works Series’

Artist Isabel Rower’s imaginative explorations are redolent of a barrage of styles and are difficult to classify under a discrete theme, functionality or aesthetic. Her work, ranging from floral crockery, imaginative paintings and theatrical presentations to chiselled tables, chairs, shelves, ornamental vessels and abstract sculptures, echoes the value which Rower ascribes to experimentation and exploration.

Moulded out of a range of materials, one common quality that can be attributed to the Brooklyn, New York-based artist’s works is the element of surprise and wonder that one experiences upon viewing them—whether through the usage of particular materials in novel and confounding ways or via the disparate designs she attributes to common objects such as chairs, tables, pots and vessels.

Her recent collection, Box Works Series, reminiscent of her past experimentations, comprises a series of ceramic furniture designs and homeware objects that appear to be made of cardboard. Using discarded cardboard boxes as moulds, Rower designed the frameworks for each of the stoneware product designs. The resultant shape, texture and colour bear semblance to cardboard cutouts.

“By materially abstracting their modest source, Rower engages with a kind of trompe-l’œil: one that disguises furniture as sculpture (and vice-versa) and presents one medium play-acting as another,” reads an excerpt from the press release. This aspect of the collection confounds the viewer and their tactile expectations. When one moves closer to touch and feel these objects, they are met with a firm and cool surface instead of the rough and dry texture anticipated. The Box Works Series consists of wall lamps, floor lamps, table lamps, a chair, stool designs, vessels and containers of varied sizes.

To understand the US-based ceramic artist’s inspirations and the ideas and processes that culminated into the Box Works Series, we quizzed Rower with a few questions.

Almas Sadique: What are some experiences and early inspirations that led you to the world of art and design?

Isabel Rower: Both my parents are artists so I have been surrounded by art, art making and a deep appreciation for [it] since I can remember. When I was young, I would make entire wardrobes for my Barbies out of fabric, hot glue and velcro because I didn’t know how to sew. It’s funny how now two decades later with a design education I am almost doing the same thing in the Box Works Series, using the same material, at a different scale.

Almas: What material do you enjoy working with the most and what are some new ones that you'd like to experiment with?

Isabel: Every material can be fun to work with in different capacities. I have been working primarily with clay for a few years now which has been very fulfilling as well as limiting. Having to always consider the inner dimensions of my kiln can be frustrating when wanting to venture into larger work. I would like to work with wood again which will be a juxtaposition to clay, because you have to work either additively or subtractively and with clay, it is much more fluid. I’m curious about working with paper as well, and getting back into painting which I haven’t done since high school.

Almas: What formed the inception for the Box Works Series?

Isabel: I was approached to make a chair for Make-do, a show organised by Marta Gallery and Catalog Sale [in New York last spring]. The promo was to make a chair in less than three days. I looked around my studio and saw an opportunity to use all of the cardboard boxes that had accumulated over the past year. I had saved the cardboard shipping materials that delivered my clay, hoping a new use would one day present itself. For this chair, I wanted to use the structures that held and delivered my material as the internal structure for the mould.

Almas: Tell us about the process of making the pieces, especially the larger ones.

Isabel: I first built a chair out of discarded cardboard and then covered it in excess red stoneware clay. The process of building the cardboard chair took about two hours. I then cut the clay into bricks and hammered them together with a wooden mallet enclosing the cardboard mould, [which] took around four hours. The clay dried out around the cardboard structure for four days. I then removed the internal mould and the clay was left standing as its shadow.

Almas: How did the Box Works Series evolve and how were the final pieces different from what you originally envisioned?

Isabel: Working with clay, there is always a degree of material secrecy. The material will do things completely unpredicted that’s totally beyond my control. This element of clay is a gift because there are wonderful things that come from it, but it is also a very frustrating aspect of the material. I think creating a whole tableau with the same technique of moulding clay over cardboard is an interesting study to see how it works at different scales. Each piece, large or small, has a pretty distinct personality. Although I made and designed everything, [this] is something I feel is totally at the whim of the material and process.