TESTIMONIALS

Barbara Sorensen continues to surprise us with her formidable ambition and talent for articulating large and looming forms of paper clay in ceramics.  To me it’s an impressive sky-full of shapes!  They seem balanced ambiguously, challenging gravity in defiance of an uneasy truce with nature.

She then turns to other inventions that are lacy, enveloping you, embroidering the walls and surrounding space.  She also shows opposites, like sturdy juggernauts of heroic pavement stones extruding upwards and inhabiting the ground level as you walk around them.  They seemingly spring from nature also and seem part of it.

Some of her sculptural explorations have a hint of the figure, which I really like.  They are understated and mysterious as she continues her search in expanding her knowledge of expressive ceramics.  She builds on her inventive history of clay, developing new amazing forms, textures, space, and volume relationships.  My admiration grows with her tenacious and significant development in the clay medium.

Rudy Autio, American Ceramic Legend

From the intimacy of the early Princess Leia forms to the more recent human-sized Pinnacles, Barbara has not only played with scale, but her combination of non-functional forms with geological references have left her work embedded with metaphor. Although layered with meaning, there’s a clarity in her work that is both fresh and vibrant.

Paul Soldner, Ceramic Artist
Founder of American Raku

It is always a pleasure to watch a student of yours continue to excel over the years in an experimentive way; pushing the envelope, exaggerating shapes, combining dissimilar forms, and using color and texture in an aggressive manner to create objects of significance. When these forms are put in their proper context, be it in a living space or an outdoor environment, they do not become answers about art, the viewer goes away asking a question. This, to me, is what art is about. Not telling the whole story, but giving you clues which you can assimilate in your own way.

I remember one afternoon at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Barbara was working with clay forms that were trying desperately to be exaggerated and outgrow the confines she had imposed on them. “Barbara,” I said, “Why the hell don’t you just let them grow?” And I’ll be damned if she didn’t. I applaud her willingness to take chances and not to become complacent with the ordinary. The new forms are setting standards again for the next series. Keep pushing the limits.

Don Reitz
American Ceramic Master