KAREN BANKS
Ceramics
ABOUT
Karen Banks is a ceramic artist whose vessels carry the quiet language of earth, fire, and smoke. Handbuilt with an instinctive touch, her pieces embody an organic quality—forms that feel as if they might have been shaped by nature itself, unearthed from the ground like fragments of an ancient story.
Her inspiration is rooted in the beauty of the found: weathered pebbles, worn shells, broken shards of ceramic. Clay, once drawn from the earth, is returned to it, waiting to be rediscovered; Karen seeks to echo this cycle in her work. Smoke firing lends its own unpredictable hand, marking each surface with traces that cannot be repeated. No two vessels are ever the same, yet together they seem to belong—like kin gathered from the same earth.
The vessel is her enduring theme, a meditation on the relationship between interior and exterior, fragility and resilience. Large, burnished forms invite the hand to follow their soft curves, while smaller pieces offer shifting tactile contrasts—silken interiors against weathered walls—reminding us that beauty lies as much in touch as in sight.
