Ariana Heinzman received her BFA in Ceramics from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2013, and has been creating and exhibiting her work regularly ever since. Including locally in exhibitions at the Vashon Center for the Arts, Pottery Northwest and is included in Seattle University’s Private Art Collection.

Her work is a metaphor for realizing ones own nudity and having the overwhelming urge to cover it up. Heinzman wields patterns of leaves to cover the ceramic form, her work becomes an allegory for The Garden of Eden. Using the anthropomorphic clay vessel, she blends the identities of earth, plant, and body into one, either to hide ones true self or to find it.

Her style uses bold lines and color to hide, or to over-accentuate, or to balance the relationship between form and surface. There is an inherent humor to the work as if to take a deep dive into one’s soul only to emerge and realize it is not that serious.

Ariana Heinzman lives and works on Vashon Island, WA

Heinzman creates quickly and intuitively. Her work is made entirely by hand, without sketching or looking at references. This process captures the urgency and joy of making and acknowledges the agency of the materials. The raw clay retains memory and reacts to Heinzman’s touch. Forms are coil built and smoothed by hand. Each layer in turn defines the path of the next - resulting in an organic end form. Once the form is leather dry, rims are trimmed into the forms of leaves using a sharp blade. Pigmented slip is applied in layers with brushes in gestural strokes forming bold lines and patterns. Form and surface are used to build illusion. There is a contrast between the naked clay body - soft and imperfect - and the bold, graphic finishing adornments.

Heinzman sees vessels as a stand-in for the human figure. Her artwork is an embodiment of humanity’s inseparable relationship to the earth. The forms embrace the historic utilitarian nature of pottery. She is influenced by characteristics that resonate in different societies around the world - particularly how line, bright colors and plant motifs are recurring elements. Her work represents common threads and deeper roots that cross cultures. Various art movements and genres have influenced and developed Heinzman’s process. These include traditional folk art and craft, ethnographic art, illustration, and Modernist sculpture. These influences further developed Heinzman’s ideas of how a form can reference nature and the body.

Seattle University Art Collection