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BY JO PEARL
Unearthed – Mycelium (Image 1)
By Jo Pearl
2023
Ceramic, stoneware
Unearthed – Mycelium is a sculpted ceramic frieze representing a slice through top soil revealing plants and fungi above ground and their connected roots and mycelium strands below – an entanglement of life, symbiotically conjoined. This panel in fact came out of the clay stop-frame animation aspect of Pearl’s practice. The underground mycelium network was gradually drawn with liquid clay, and each creeping extension of the mycelium captured photographically via stop-motion software, and edited into a sequence in Unearthed a short clay animated film. This campaigning short is in essence a bug and bacteria ballet set to waltzing classical music (https://vimeo.com/942253209?share=copy). At the end of the shoot, the clay panel was dried and kiln-fired to transfix it ceramically. Porcelain white plants and fungi were then sculpted and inserted into the panel expressing the fragility, connectedness, and tantalising close proximity of this symbiotic network.
Oddkin (Image 2-8)
By Jo Pearl
2024
Ceramic: stoneware and terracotta
‘Oddkin celebrates the awe-inspiring biodiversity found in the ground beneath our feet. Afterall a cup of healthy soil contains around 200 billion bacteria, 20 million protozoa, 100,000 nematodes, 100,000 meters of fungi and probably one earthworm. In doing so, Oddkin attempts to overcome preconceptions about ‘dirt’ and create a counterpoint to current squeamishness and germaphobia relating to soil. Using clay to explore this underground world felt organic and appropriate, as clay is part of soil. By playing with scale, Pearl is magnifying the oddkin’s importance, making these microscopic creatures visible and revealing their myriad of unexpected forms. Ceramic nematodes, rotifers, bacteria, amoeba, and protozoa are gently enlivened, all hanging by a thread, mirroring their precariousness in the face of industrial chemicals. The work’s title alludes to critical thinker Donna Haraway’s coinage ‘making oddkin’, which describes the need for novel combinations of, and collaborations between humans and non-humans, without whom there is no food or life on earth. We need to fall in love with the soil, and the beings that live there. They are our oddkin.
Image Credits - Elsa Pearl
Unearthed – Mycelium (Image 1)
By Jo Pearl
2023
Ceramic, stoneware
Unearthed – Mycelium is a sculpted ceramic frieze representing a slice through top soil revealing plants and fungi above ground and their connected roots and mycelium strands below – an entanglement of life, symbiotically conjoined. This panel in fact came out of the clay stop-frame animation aspect of Pearl’s practice. The underground mycelium network was gradually drawn with liquid clay, and each creeping extension of the mycelium captured photographically via stop-motion software, and edited into a sequence in Unearthed a short clay animated film. This campaigning short is in essence a bug and bacteria ballet set to waltzing classical music (https://vimeo.com/942253209?share=copy). At the end of the shoot, the clay panel was dried and kiln-fired to transfix it ceramically. Porcelain white plants and fungi were then sculpted and inserted into the panel expressing the fragility, connectedness, and tantalising close proximity of this symbiotic network.
Oddkin (Image 2-8)
By Jo Pearl
2024
Ceramic: stoneware and terracotta
‘Oddkin celebrates the awe-inspiring biodiversity found in the ground beneath our feet. Afterall a cup of healthy soil contains around 200 billion bacteria, 20 million protozoa, 100,000 nematodes, 100,000 meters of fungi and probably one earthworm. In doing so, Oddkin attempts to overcome preconceptions about ‘dirt’ and create a counterpoint to current squeamishness and germaphobia relating to soil. Using clay to explore this underground world felt organic and appropriate, as clay is part of soil. By playing with scale, Pearl is magnifying the oddkin’s importance, making these microscopic creatures visible and revealing their myriad of unexpected forms. Ceramic nematodes, rotifers, bacteria, amoeba, and protozoa are gently enlivened, all hanging by a thread, mirroring their precariousness in the face of industrial chemicals. The work’s title alludes to critical thinker Donna Haraway’s coinage ‘making oddkin’, which describes the need for novel combinations of, and collaborations between humans and non-humans, without whom there is no food or life on earth. We need to fall in love with the soil, and the beings that live there. They are our oddkin.
Image Credits - Elsa Pearl
Jo Pearl is a multi-disciplinary artist working in clay, a provocateur using this benign material to elicit emotional reactions. Her practice is also a celebration of the materiality of clay and its diverse states of being. She brings clay to life, through kinetic sculpture, emotional portraiture, haptic abstract forms and combining clay stop-motion with fired ceramics. Sculpting, she often keeps the raw clay malleable, constantly evolving her forms, while capturing each iteration photographically with stop-motion software to weave a narrative into film. After the shoot, she may kiln-fire the outcomes, transforming them from clay to ceramic as though in suspended animation. This use of film is not only an environmental choice, to minimise her kiln-firings, but also allows her to magically breathe life into the work – like a mythical golem. By combining claymation and ceramics Jo can explore notions of the fleeting and the timeless, agency and alchemy.
BY JO PEARL
Unearthed – Mycelium (Image 1)
By Jo Pearl
2023
Ceramic, stoneware
Unearthed – Mycelium is a sculpted ceramic frieze representing a slice through top soil revealing plants and fungi above ground and their connected roots and mycelium strands below – an entanglement of life, symbiotically conjoined. This panel in fact came out of the clay stop-frame animation aspect of Pearl’s practice. The underground mycelium network was gradually drawn with liquid clay, and each creeping extension of the mycelium captured photographically via stop-motion software, and edited into a sequence in Unearthed a short clay animated film. This campaigning short is in essence a bug and bacteria ballet set to waltzing classical music (https://vimeo.com/942253209?share=copy). At the end of the shoot, the clay panel was dried and kiln-fired to transfix it ceramically. Porcelain white plants and fungi were then sculpted and inserted into the panel expressing the fragility, connectedness, and tantalising close proximity of this symbiotic network.
Oddkin (Image 2-8)
By Jo Pearl
2024
Ceramic: stoneware and terracotta
‘Oddkin celebrates the awe-inspiring biodiversity found in the ground beneath our feet. Afterall a cup of healthy soil contains around 200 billion bacteria, 20 million protozoa, 100,000 nematodes, 100,000 meters of fungi and probably one earthworm. In doing so, Oddkin attempts to overcome preconceptions about ‘dirt’ and create a counterpoint to current squeamishness and germaphobia relating to soil. Using clay to explore this underground world felt organic and appropriate, as clay is part of soil. By playing with scale, Pearl is magnifying the oddkin’s importance, making these microscopic creatures visible and revealing their myriad of unexpected forms. Ceramic nematodes, rotifers, bacteria, amoeba, and protozoa are gently enlivened, all hanging by a thread, mirroring their precariousness in the face of industrial chemicals. The work’s title alludes to critical thinker Donna Haraway’s coinage ‘making oddkin’, which describes the need for novel combinations of, and collaborations between humans and non-humans, without whom there is no food or life on earth. We need to fall in love with the soil, and the beings that live there. They are our oddkin.
Image Credits - Elsa Pearl
Unearthed – Mycelium (Image 1)
By Jo Pearl
2023
Ceramic, stoneware
Unearthed – Mycelium is a sculpted ceramic frieze representing a slice through top soil revealing plants and fungi above ground and their connected roots and mycelium strands below – an entanglement of life, symbiotically conjoined. This panel in fact came out of the clay stop-frame animation aspect of Pearl’s practice. The underground mycelium network was gradually drawn with liquid clay, and each creeping extension of the mycelium captured photographically via stop-motion software, and edited into a sequence in Unearthed a short clay animated film. This campaigning short is in essence a bug and bacteria ballet set to waltzing classical music (https://vimeo.com/942253209?share=copy). At the end of the shoot, the clay panel was dried and kiln-fired to transfix it ceramically. Porcelain white plants and fungi were then sculpted and inserted into the panel expressing the fragility, connectedness, and tantalising close proximity of this symbiotic network.
Oddkin (Image 2-8)
By Jo Pearl
2024
Ceramic: stoneware and terracotta
‘Oddkin celebrates the awe-inspiring biodiversity found in the ground beneath our feet. Afterall a cup of healthy soil contains around 200 billion bacteria, 20 million protozoa, 100,000 nematodes, 100,000 meters of fungi and probably one earthworm. In doing so, Oddkin attempts to overcome preconceptions about ‘dirt’ and create a counterpoint to current squeamishness and germaphobia relating to soil. Using clay to explore this underground world felt organic and appropriate, as clay is part of soil. By playing with scale, Pearl is magnifying the oddkin’s importance, making these microscopic creatures visible and revealing their myriad of unexpected forms. Ceramic nematodes, rotifers, bacteria, amoeba, and protozoa are gently enlivened, all hanging by a thread, mirroring their precariousness in the face of industrial chemicals. The work’s title alludes to critical thinker Donna Haraway’s coinage ‘making oddkin’, which describes the need for novel combinations of, and collaborations between humans and non-humans, without whom there is no food or life on earth. We need to fall in love with the soil, and the beings that live there. They are our oddkin.
Image Credits - Elsa Pearl
Jo Pearl is a multi-disciplinary artist working in clay, a provocateur using this benign material to elicit emotional reactions. Her practice is also a celebration of the materiality of clay and its diverse states of being. She brings clay to life, through kinetic sculpture, emotional portraiture, haptic abstract forms and combining clay stop-motion with fired ceramics. Sculpting, she often keeps the raw clay malleable, constantly evolving her forms, while capturing each iteration photographically with stop-motion software to weave a narrative into film. After the shoot, she may kiln-fire the outcomes, transforming them from clay to ceramic as though in suspended animation. This use of film is not only an environmental choice, to minimise her kiln-firings, but also allows her to magically breathe life into the work – like a mythical golem. By combining claymation and ceramics Jo can explore notions of the fleeting and the timeless, agency and alchemy.
BY JO PEARL
Unearthed – Mycelium (Image 1)
By Jo Pearl
2023
Ceramic, stoneware
Unearthed – Mycelium is a sculpted ceramic frieze representing a slice through top soil revealing plants and fungi above ground and their connected roots and mycelium strands below – an entanglement of life, symbiotically conjoined. This panel in fact came out of the clay stop-frame animation aspect of Pearl’s practice. The underground mycelium network was gradually drawn with liquid clay, and each creeping extension of the mycelium captured photographically via stop-motion software, and edited into a sequence in Unearthed a short clay animated film. This campaigning short is in essence a bug and bacteria ballet set to waltzing classical music (https://vimeo.com/942253209?share=copy). At the end of the shoot, the clay panel was dried and kiln-fired to transfix it ceramically. Porcelain white plants and fungi were then sculpted and inserted into the panel expressing the fragility, connectedness, and tantalising close proximity of this symbiotic network.
Oddkin (Image 2-8)
By Jo Pearl
2024
Ceramic: stoneware and terracotta
‘Oddkin celebrates the awe-inspiring biodiversity found in the ground beneath our feet. Afterall a cup of healthy soil contains around 200 billion bacteria, 20 million protozoa, 100,000 nematodes, 100,000 meters of fungi and probably one earthworm. In doing so, Oddkin attempts to overcome preconceptions about ‘dirt’ and create a counterpoint to current squeamishness and germaphobia relating to soil. Using clay to explore this underground world felt organic and appropriate, as clay is part of soil. By playing with scale, Pearl is magnifying the oddkin’s importance, making these microscopic creatures visible and revealing their myriad of unexpected forms. Ceramic nematodes, rotifers, bacteria, amoeba, and protozoa are gently enlivened, all hanging by a thread, mirroring their precariousness in the face of industrial chemicals. The work’s title alludes to critical thinker Donna Haraway’s coinage ‘making oddkin’, which describes the need for novel combinations of, and collaborations between humans and non-humans, without whom there is no food or life on earth. We need to fall in love with the soil, and the beings that live there. They are our oddkin.
Image Credits - Elsa Pearl
Unearthed – Mycelium (Image 1)
By Jo Pearl
2023
Ceramic, stoneware
Unearthed – Mycelium is a sculpted ceramic frieze representing a slice through top soil revealing plants and fungi above ground and their connected roots and mycelium strands below – an entanglement of life, symbiotically conjoined. This panel in fact came out of the clay stop-frame animation aspect of Pearl’s practice. The underground mycelium network was gradually drawn with liquid clay, and each creeping extension of the mycelium captured photographically via stop-motion software, and edited into a sequence in Unearthed a short clay animated film. This campaigning short is in essence a bug and bacteria ballet set to waltzing classical music (https://vimeo.com/942253209?share=copy). At the end of the shoot, the clay panel was dried and kiln-fired to transfix it ceramically. Porcelain white plants and fungi were then sculpted and inserted into the panel expressing the fragility, connectedness, and tantalising close proximity of this symbiotic network.
Oddkin (Image 2-8)
By Jo Pearl
2024
Ceramic: stoneware and terracotta
‘Oddkin celebrates the awe-inspiring biodiversity found in the ground beneath our feet. Afterall a cup of healthy soil contains around 200 billion bacteria, 20 million protozoa, 100,000 nematodes, 100,000 meters of fungi and probably one earthworm. In doing so, Oddkin attempts to overcome preconceptions about ‘dirt’ and create a counterpoint to current squeamishness and germaphobia relating to soil. Using clay to explore this underground world felt organic and appropriate, as clay is part of soil. By playing with scale, Pearl is magnifying the oddkin’s importance, making these microscopic creatures visible and revealing their myriad of unexpected forms. Ceramic nematodes, rotifers, bacteria, amoeba, and protozoa are gently enlivened, all hanging by a thread, mirroring their precariousness in the face of industrial chemicals. The work’s title alludes to critical thinker Donna Haraway’s coinage ‘making oddkin’, which describes the need for novel combinations of, and collaborations between humans and non-humans, without whom there is no food or life on earth. We need to fall in love with the soil, and the beings that live there. They are our oddkin.
Image Credits - Elsa Pearl
Jo Pearl is a multi-disciplinary artist working in clay, a provocateur using this benign material to elicit emotional reactions. Her practice is also a celebration of the materiality of clay and its diverse states of being. She brings clay to life, through kinetic sculpture, emotional portraiture, haptic abstract forms and combining clay stop-motion with fired ceramics. Sculpting, she often keeps the raw clay malleable, constantly evolving her forms, while capturing each iteration photographically with stop-motion software to weave a narrative into film. After the shoot, she may kiln-fire the outcomes, transforming them from clay to ceramic as though in suspended animation. This use of film is not only an environmental choice, to minimise her kiln-firings, but also allows her to magically breathe life into the work – like a mythical golem. By combining claymation and ceramics Jo can explore notions of the fleeting and the timeless, agency and alchemy.
BY JO PEARL
Unearthed – Mycelium (Image 1)
By Jo Pearl
2023
Ceramic, stoneware
Unearthed – Mycelium is a sculpted ceramic frieze representing a slice through top soil revealing plants and fungi above ground and their connected roots and mycelium strands below – an entanglement of life, symbiotically conjoined. This panel in fact came out of the clay stop-frame animation aspect of Pearl’s practice. The underground mycelium network was gradually drawn with liquid clay, and each creeping extension of the mycelium captured photographically via stop-motion software, and edited into a sequence in Unearthed a short clay animated film. This campaigning short is in essence a bug and bacteria ballet set to waltzing classical music (https://vimeo.com/942253209?share=copy). At the end of the shoot, the clay panel was dried and kiln-fired to transfix it ceramically. Porcelain white plants and fungi were then sculpted and inserted into the panel expressing the fragility, connectedness, and tantalising close proximity of this symbiotic network.
Oddkin (Image 2-8)
By Jo Pearl
2024
Ceramic: stoneware and terracotta
‘Oddkin celebrates the awe-inspiring biodiversity found in the ground beneath our feet. Afterall a cup of healthy soil contains around 200 billion bacteria, 20 million protozoa, 100,000 nematodes, 100,000 meters of fungi and probably one earthworm. In doing so, Oddkin attempts to overcome preconceptions about ‘dirt’ and create a counterpoint to current squeamishness and germaphobia relating to soil. Using clay to explore this underground world felt organic and appropriate, as clay is part of soil. By playing with scale, Pearl is magnifying the oddkin’s importance, making these microscopic creatures visible and revealing their myriad of unexpected forms. Ceramic nematodes, rotifers, bacteria, amoeba, and protozoa are gently enlivened, all hanging by a thread, mirroring their precariousness in the face of industrial chemicals. The work’s title alludes to critical thinker Donna Haraway’s coinage ‘making oddkin’, which describes the need for novel combinations of, and collaborations between humans and non-humans, without whom there is no food or life on earth. We need to fall in love with the soil, and the beings that live there. They are our oddkin.
Image Credits - Elsa Pearl
Unearthed – Mycelium (Image 1)
By Jo Pearl
2023
Ceramic, stoneware
Unearthed – Mycelium is a sculpted ceramic frieze representing a slice through top soil revealing plants and fungi above ground and their connected roots and mycelium strands below – an entanglement of life, symbiotically conjoined. This panel in fact came out of the clay stop-frame animation aspect of Pearl’s practice. The underground mycelium network was gradually drawn with liquid clay, and each creeping extension of the mycelium captured photographically via stop-motion software, and edited into a sequence in Unearthed a short clay animated film. This campaigning short is in essence a bug and bacteria ballet set to waltzing classical music (https://vimeo.com/942253209?share=copy). At the end of the shoot, the clay panel was dried and kiln-fired to transfix it ceramically. Porcelain white plants and fungi were then sculpted and inserted into the panel expressing the fragility, connectedness, and tantalising close proximity of this symbiotic network.
Oddkin (Image 2-8)
By Jo Pearl
2024
Ceramic: stoneware and terracotta
‘Oddkin celebrates the awe-inspiring biodiversity found in the ground beneath our feet. Afterall a cup of healthy soil contains around 200 billion bacteria, 20 million protozoa, 100,000 nematodes, 100,000 meters of fungi and probably one earthworm. In doing so, Oddkin attempts to overcome preconceptions about ‘dirt’ and create a counterpoint to current squeamishness and germaphobia relating to soil. Using clay to explore this underground world felt organic and appropriate, as clay is part of soil. By playing with scale, Pearl is magnifying the oddkin’s importance, making these microscopic creatures visible and revealing their myriad of unexpected forms. Ceramic nematodes, rotifers, bacteria, amoeba, and protozoa are gently enlivened, all hanging by a thread, mirroring their precariousness in the face of industrial chemicals. The work’s title alludes to critical thinker Donna Haraway’s coinage ‘making oddkin’, which describes the need for novel combinations of, and collaborations between humans and non-humans, without whom there is no food or life on earth. We need to fall in love with the soil, and the beings that live there. They are our oddkin.
Image Credits - Elsa Pearl
Jo Pearl is a multi-disciplinary artist working in clay, a provocateur using this benign material to elicit emotional reactions. Her practice is also a celebration of the materiality of clay and its diverse states of being. She brings clay to life, through kinetic sculpture, emotional portraiture, haptic abstract forms and combining clay stop-motion with fired ceramics. Sculpting, she often keeps the raw clay malleable, constantly evolving her forms, while capturing each iteration photographically with stop-motion software to weave a narrative into film. After the shoot, she may kiln-fire the outcomes, transforming them from clay to ceramic as though in suspended animation. This use of film is not only an environmental choice, to minimise her kiln-firings, but also allows her to magically breathe life into the work – like a mythical golem. By combining claymation and ceramics Jo can explore notions of the fleeting and the timeless, agency and alchemy.