Hi! I’m Dominique Mediak-Pirigyi, an artist and art educator from Buffalo, NY. I’m so excited to have a piece entitled “Stacked” in this year’s The Cup, The Mug exhibit.
I am fairly new to the ceramics scene, and this is my second time exhibiting at Main Street Arts. Though I have moved throughout the artistic spectrum from photography to digital collage to ceramics (mostly due to my career as a high school art teacher), I feel that working three dimensionally has become my mainstay.
For about fifteen years now I have been experimenting with a sculptural process that is closer to assemblage than it is with traditional functional ceramics. Working with plaster molds, most of which have been salvaged from grandmother’s basements or now-defunct pottery businesses, I pour simpler geometric forms that I deconstruct and then reassemble into a functional piece.
Most of the pieces I create are teapots: I reimagine lids as spouts, handles as feet, or rims as handles. Many times, I pour several forms and store them until I can use them as a collage artist would use paper- I don’t always have a clear idea of what the final piece will look like. Play is really important to my process- and it allows me to push the limits of what the forms can be.
Most of my work has been on the functional side, (although often times the piece’s function is subverted in a way that renders it more sculptural) but I do like to wander over to making non-functional pieces as well. Most important to me is the structure. I love coming up with new combinations like an architect might design a postmodern space.
Nature often appears in my work as well, particularly our human interactions with and often segregation from it.
You can find my work at linwoodmodern.myportfolio.com, and on Instagram, @linwood_modern.
