Airy Heights to Watery Depths
By Cate McQuaid
Cheryl Ann Thomas’s big, crumpling, airy, light-on-their-feet ceramics on view at Gallery NAGA spring from a long, arduous process. First, she builds a large vessel, 3 or 4 feet high, by laying one spaghetti-thin strand of porcelain clay over the next. She makes it top-heavy, so that when she fires it, the vessel slumps. She’ll fashion two or three of these, then fit one on top of the next like puzzle pieces, and put the whole thing in the kiln to fix it.