Charles Smith

Mobile, Alabama, USA

Title: Designed Tripod Vase

Year of Creation: 2011

Glaze: Unglazed, sgraffito technique

Clay Body: Stoneware

Dimensions: Height 14.75 inches, Width 9.75 inches

Artist's Statement: For more than thirty-five years, Mobile based Charles Smith has been technically perfecting ceramic vessels, distinctive in shape and decoration. With intricately interwoven patterns, as though inspired by the design of some ancestral robe, Smith's decorative motifs pay homage to his African roots filtered through his own life on Alabama's Gulf Coast. What Smith has brought to his Alabama pottery is an intense, even passionate, desire to reconnect to the African traditions to which he has a rightful inheritance. His work was included in the important national exhibition Uncommon Beauty in Common Objects: The Legacy of African American Craft Art.