Shelbi Reichenau Final Project: Self-Portrait

        I am a product of my experiences. I am created from a mixture of genetics, a blessed upbringing, and life experiences, I have become an artist. Like a recipe, many ingredients have played a part in my final product. I did not choose my family but was blessed with one filled with strong women. I did, however, choose my life-path. This path was influenced by my upbringing along with multiple factors. The people I have met along the way combined with my experiences, like Junction, have played a significant role in the person I am today and this art piece. This is my self-portrait. I will not go into detail about every piece of imagery found on these plates but what I will do is tell you more about the influence this class has had on creating this piece.

Born in Junction, these plates are the product of the last firing in the soda kiln at Junction. I cannot help but feel like these plates have a ceremonial feel about them beyond the typical creation. They are extremely special to me. They mark the end of an era and I might add the end of one of my favorite life chapters. When thinking about these plates I knew I wanted them to be plates to display rather than eat off of. The majority of my pottery is utilitarian and I have struggled with ways of incorporating my painting and photography into my artwork. These help accomplish those desires while still conveying the meaning I wanted. We saw in our book many ends to crafting eras. Programs that ended and couldn't continue on but the artwork from those programs lived on. I wanted the same for these plates.


When thinking of imagery I felt like I needed to have something special on these plates. I reflected. I thought a lot about myself as an artist, more specifically as a potter.  I felt like I needed to pay homage to Junction while turning these plates into a self-portrait piece. Junction has had a huge influence on who I became as an artist and person. I would have never even gone if it weren't for Future encouraging me to go in undergraduate. I met my love there, clay.  Along with Junction imagery, I wanted to highlight the other ingredients of my self-journey.


Much of my research in my MAE have been on feminism and it's role in pottery which is why I chose to focus on female figures in this self-portrait. All these women, family or not, have affected my artistic and personal development. I wanted to create a self-portrait without including images of myself. I felt like paying tribute to my past was the best way to show who I am in the present. We were asked in this class to think about how we would want to be represented in a book like we read. I would want my influences to be recognized while talking about who I am as a potter. The imagery is filled with the things I would want to be highlighted. You will see pictures of my grandmothers, mother, Future and my favorite artist Beatrice. These women were teachers and artists. All these women play specific and significant roles in the development of my artistic abilities. You will also see hand-written family recipes, glaze recipes written in Junction and a sketch I drew in front of the last wood firing in Junction. Everything that was layered on top of the photos was handwritten and scanned in from either my personal sketchbook or my families recipes. Recipes are something passed down from generation to generation whether they are for food or glaze. Recipes are important to me. Something I enjoyed learning about while taking this class is the massive amount of tradition involved in craft. The recipes symbolize my personal traditions along with the traditions I plan to continue.

I chose to display them with plate hangers because it speaks back to my upbringing in a house filled with antiques including plates hanging on the walls. Side story, my grandmother collected state plates from places she had visited. They were displayed in my house growing up and eventually passed on to me. Hanging plates as decor is nostalgic to me. This is her on the plate on the left. I made specific choices when placing each person on their plate. My Grandmother on the plate with all the soda ash was a very lively and colorful person. She would have loved the texture and colors on this plate while my other grandmother (the right) was more traditional therefore her plate is more conventional.

I feel like as a whole I am pleased with the final product and the overall outcome of this class. This piece is sentimental to me and was developed during a semester I had many personal struggles. This class along with my independent study have allowed me to reflect on my personal artistry. This class has also given me the chance to learn more about craft as a whole and where I fall in that world. I hope to carve myself out a place in the craft world while always remembering to thank the ones that came before me. I am who I am because of them.