Genesis Pillars

by Ellie Lieber

“I’m a first generation artist from rural Illinois, where my first introduction to clay came from agriculture, not art. Growing up alongside my mother’s flower farm, sowing seeds with her by hand every season, meant I spent a lot of my adolescence, literally elbow deep in our soil. This physical connection to our land has fostered a deep connection with the ceramic materials I use in my practice. Years of designing and building shelters, corrals, fences, and operating heavy machinery has instilled in me a hardworking problem-solving approach that is very prevalent in my ceramic practice. I design and fabricate my own tools like handmade osage wood ribs/knives, 3D-modeled extruder dies, laser-cut mylar stencils. Each piece emerges from this process of observation and invention that I learned working on my farm.”