Greta Wilsterman's Projects

BFA Student

Major: Ceramics

Graduation Year: 2017

Artist Statement:

Children prioritize and navigate the world in a way that is at once completely silly and perfectly serious. They hold dear things that are frivolous, and give love unabashedly and obsessively. The ardor of their levity is something that interests me greatly. With my work I ask the question: what if we kept loving things the way we loved them when we were children? I want to offer this as a possibility to the consumer of my product.
To do this, I use iron transfer decals to make tableware products that are evocative of the archetypical “crush” posters that children and teenagers often have hanging on their walls. The decal mugs feature mainly “serious” people—politicians, actors, writers, and artists. They are people who may be adored by adults, and through my work I attempt to allow frivolity back into that adoration. Emblazoned with gilded hearts, an image of a serious person becomes something frivolous, and recollects the unburdened joys of childhood.
A large part of my current body of work does not contain any representative iron transfer decals, but I attempt to offer the same emotional qualities there, through color, form, texture, and the abstraction of known symbols.
This “serious versus silly” dichotomy also brought to mind the possibility of merging other concepts that are generally seen to be mutually exclusive. I am focused on the push and pull of opposite values and the discovery of equilibrium therein. The serious versus frivolous theme is one of my major subjects, and is considered alongside the themes of joy and celebration versus sadness and darkness, and gaudiness versus elegance.

Biography:

Greta Wilsterman is a craft artist based in New England. She grew up looking at the ocean and finds her studio practice to be an ebb and flow of visual discovery. While she also paints, writes, sews, and dabbles in woodworking, she is most interested in exploring the subtleties of clay as a craft medium. Her interest in the design of modern tableware stems from a love of cooking and baking. Greta learned to cook from her father when she was young, and is now an avid preparer of food. She spends most free afternoons planning and executing elaborate meals to share with family and friends. She is interested in human connections and the way a person can be affected by an object or event. With this in mind, she seeks to sneak little pieces of happy into people’s cabinets.