Laura Kukkee
FLOCC
My creative process is about gathering visual information, building up a visual vocabulary, finding new ways
of using this language for expression and exploring ceramic materials and processes. I am very interested in traditional European ceramic types: narrative vessel, mantelpiece garniture, betrothal dish, tondo, architectural cladding, flower brick, basket. I use a type as a starting point, examining function and formal rules; I rethink the rules, toss out some, reduce and simplify others, amplify and exaggerate still others. The approach I take in the studio is experimental, playful.
My training is as a potter. Making pottery is so much about following steps and the many stages of development of any finished work. Too much control over each step in the process can sterilize the work; too much planning can make it boring to be in the studio. Seeing traditional ceramic processes only as one, two, and three can limit expression. I am very interested in maintaining a little mystery in studio and in deliberately adding some uncertainty to my process of making and finishing. Decisions I make about a piece at one stage are not directly 
related to decisions I make later. I may build up patterns and textures at one stage, then cover or negate them in some way at the following stages. I do not make complete plans for each piece because I feel that I am in a continuous collaboration. I try to respond to my pieces in a fresh manner at each stage of making. The result is a built up accumulation of my decisions for each piece, a record of my activity, a gathering together of the many times spent with each piece in studio.
-Laura Kukkee
Bio: Laura Kukkee studied at Kent State University, earning her MFA degree in 2004. She is currently Assistant Professor of Art, heading the ceramics program at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, MO.
She is originally from Toronto, Ontario and is an alumnus of the University of Toronto and Sheridan College School of Crafts and Design. She spent three years as artist-in-residence in the ceramics studio of Harbourfront Centre in Toronto from 1999 to 2002. In 2002, Laura was awarded a prestigious emerging artists grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Most recently, her work was included in "Skin Deep, Celebrating the Variety and Beauty of Ceramic Surfaces" this spring at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina.
