SLEEPWALKING

View of the exhibition looking North

I met Jennifer King and her ceramics for the first time last night, August 10, at The Pit gallery in Los Angeles, CA. Her works are part of the group show Wild Range—on view through September 2024. There couldn’t have been a better day for the encounter.

Italians, on August 10th, celebrate La Notte di San Lorenzo—a summer night made magical by the Perseid meteor shower slashing the sky. Noses are up in the hope of catching a shooting star and making a wish. King’s works are about that same hope and dreamy state of mind. They are talismans and gateways to parallel yet possible universes.

View of the exhibition looking South

Heraclitus (535-475 BC) said, “Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play”. That very playful seriousness is intercepted in King’s markings on the glazed stoneware of the large vases displayed. Their structure echoes classical pottery. In fact, the main volume rests on a base that while being functional also suspends midair the fairytale narrated across the looping surfaces.  

In ancient Greece large vases were called Kraters. The word comes from the Greek word kerannynai, which means "to mix". But the sound of the Greek word also evokes the English word crater—the pit, the mouth of the volcano. King’s tales flow out of that poetic fire—the 2,500F kiln temperature breeding alchemy.

And abracadabra! An enchanted reality materializes on the walls of the craters—fish swims in a perennial loop, the tongue of a crocodile morphs into a sleeping girl, Adam and Eve appear serene and never forced to leave the Garden of Eden, there is water, lots of water and nature in an almost embryonic state. Human bodies, parts of them, insects, flowers, leaves, extinct or yet to come animals float in the dreamy reality of our fragile eggshell mind just before dawn.

 Experiencing King’s vases feels like paying a visit to an oracle. While looking straight down into the vases—into the void, into the abyss of the unconsciousness—we are confronted with twirling strings of words that are also the title of the works. On the inner walls of the volcano, we can read: she wondered at this all-consuming love that turned her inside out; now take my hand and we’ll stare into the glare of the sun; She came to realize the beginnings and endings would always feel the same; Wondering at the great surprise of the survival of the self; there will be perils at every juncture; Unlike Impossibilities; On your head there will bloom a rose.

Life cycles and eternity are at play in King’s works. The blooming-dying-and-being-born-again is her Notte di San Lorenzo wish offering the viewer an otherworldly yet possible return to a different start.