John Vandermeulen

Enamel Sculptural Forms

"The challenge in medium to large format enamelling is to find the balance between the enamel and the metal form.Traditionally, glass enamelling was a jewellery art, with emphasis on the enamel and only secondarily on the underlying metal.In the larger format the metal takes on its own importance through form and shape.The enamel can now have a textural context, for example, underfiring to gain a palpable texture, overfiring to 'age' or 'stress' the enamel surface.

My personal context, if not pre-occupation, is that of the passage of time and the infinity of space and the relationship between man and that time and space.What is 'being'?There is the minute-ness or the irrelevance of man seen in this vastness without dimension or comprehensible shape.

I repeatedly turn to building up shapes or forms from smaller fragments and to the bowl and head as favorite forms.Building up a piece from riveted metal fragments is a very satisfying creative process and very spontaneous.One can build up the form as it emerges slowly on the work bench, a process similar to a ceramic vase or crock emerging from the clay through the potter's hands.Often I will construct one form, break it up and then rebuild a new form - in fact, a metamorphosis of form, or literally a shape shift.As a process, it has a very different meaning.

The bowl and head are for me not so much actual representations as that they are abstracted forms and surfaces.Viewed as forms, I can explore different shapes and curves while disregarding the shape as a real object.At the same time, the surfaces allow all sorts of experimentation and expression with texture and the colour of enamel." - John Vandermeulen