Dallas Wooten

Artist Statement

Wooten utilizes the flaws, blemishes, and marks created in the process of making, and recontextualizes them within intricate patterning inspired by traditional status imagery, patterns, and materials. Wooten's work explores historically utilitarian and simple forms. These posts are then adorned with process and gestural marks abstracted into status-based patterns, such as vine scrolls and floral imagery. The work aims to take the process and residual information left by the hand to emphasize the importance of the human mark within the context of status-informed pottery. There are aesthetic and conceptual ties to both Japanese ceramics and modernist design that are considered within the work, both visually and metaphorically. Form and silhouette are of the utmost importance, as they serve as the canvas and frame in which these explorations take place. The pots, although functional and minimal, then serve as both objects of desire and functional vessels for consumption or display