Iridescent Ceramic Sculptures


Ira Winarsky's iridescent ceramic works represent a truly unique accomplishment, not in the least because of the rich complexity and temporal quality of Winarsky's glazes-which only a tiny handful artists have ever been able to recreate. The form of the art transforms light into rainbows of color with its fine glazed surface, creating depth, space, movement. Winarsky felt those shimmering colors were organic and earthy while still being deeply human: that they were reflections of "one's self, one's room, one's nature." Whether embodying enormous earthquakes or tiny waves, his pieces are kinetic and interactive; their light is still and constant when you are, and dynamic when you are not. The colors, too, change as the light changes, giving his pieces a movement of both form and time that depend entirely on a relationship to the viewer. In both landscapes and human forms, Winarsky intended his works to be both erotic and seductive, possessing a sensuality and deep intimacy with physical nature.

The works known as "landscapes" are Ira Winarsky's largest body of work. They range from figurative to abstract, wrestling with ideas about emulating nature, both environmental and human; representing form and movement-of land and tof bodies; intimacy and distance. The landscapes are informed by his interest in architecture, a nuanced take on the relationship between land and structure, land and geometry. They are vertical landscapes, landscapes that fit together, landscape sections, and water-related landscape environments. They are also anthropological landscapes: always about the relationship to the viewer, whose self is reflected in them, and to humanity. Winarsky called them "landscapes for or by children, landscapes for or by wildlife, and landscapes to commemorate a memorial or conceptual idea." And all of his natural landscapes are iridescent, an awesome iridescent panoply of colors that can only be described as magical.

All important art, Winarsky used to say, is art that has a concept: an idea that responds to those who see it. He believed his art was able to transform in a beautiful way-visually and physically, as a product of his own humor and joy and creating it, and always, in its effect to and response to environment and the viewer. He called his ceramic landscapes "the result of heart and mind: the heart, being the primal, emotional aspect of the work, and the mind the technology and original research, that has produced it."