Kelly Wearstler x Morgan Peck transcend creative boundaries with Contour

Renowned American interior designer, Kelly Wearstler and her longtime creative comrade, LA-based ceramist Morgan Peck, team up for their latest artistic endeavour, Contour. Throughout her career, Wearstler has provided unwavering support to the emerging artists of Los Angeles aiming to build a strong community and personal relationships. Morgan Peck, commissioned under the same initiative to create a site-specific installation and custom decor pieces for the new hotel Downtown L.A. Proper, will unveil Contour, available exclusively in Wearstler’s online Gallery from March 24, 2022. “Contour is the culmination of nearly a decade of working with Morgan, a relationship that I truly treasure. It is incredibly special and exciting to launch the collection exclusively on my online Gallery platform,” says Kelly Wearstler.

The Contour collection embodies inimitable compositions via nine pieces of ceramic art ranging from vases to bowls, plates, candlesticks and large-scale mirrors, a new addition to Peck’s oeuvre. Each specimen delivering a unique design makes the viewers ponder and develop their individual interpretations. The pieces, both sculptural and functional, are a display of Peck’s characteristic freehand style, manifesting an amalgamation of her love of minimalist and brutalist architecture and her experience in creating small, abstract sculptures. “Morgan and I are committed to maintaining thoughtful, open dialogue when it comes to our work and styles, and this collaboration perfectly captures our distinct languages in a truly beautiful and individual form”, shares Wearstler.

Each object is a revelation of deft handcrafting, a process that is about five weeks long to finish, evident in the faint fingerprints and impressions that embellish the surface. She draws inspiration from rock shapes, stone formations, interlocking Legos, horseshoe arches and 1950’s-era car fins to concoct her distinctive and erratic designs. Every look is rendered a final touch with monochromatic finishes in Smokey Plum and Frosted Flax. The entire ensemble cohesively operates as a functional body, meticulously handcrafted with an architectural and industrial feel.

With Wearstler as her mentor, the artist chronicles her conspicuous quest to go beyond the limits of her creative process. In the process of creating the vases and the mirror, Peck experimented with a completely new construction method. The Smokey Plum glaze too, is an expansion of her artistic and sculptural skills. “I feel very inspired by Kelly’s ability to design layered interiors that do not fit into one category or even wish to,” says Peck. “Both of us share an instinct to absorb different elements of historical designs from our surroundings and mix it with something from the present. Like Kelly’s work, which is dynamic and ever-evolving, I work with clay, a material that inherently lends itself to easy and immediate shape-shifting,” Peck adds.

The collaboration, an exemplary work in clay, satisfies and conforms to the creative languages of both Kelly Wearstler and Morgan Peck. Their work reflects elements of history, something both the artists commit to, in a contemporary yet incomparable way. Contour is a gutsy display of dynamism in design, vulnerability in technique and novelty in expression.