Ceramics and Sculpture by Ian McDonald

It’s not the first time I’ve come across Ian McDonald’s works, he’s always getting involved in interesting exhibitions, one last year titled “One Eight Hundred” was so close to our own name that it’s been stuck in my head for a long time now. So today when I revisited his website it was a nice surprise to see some new photography of an exhibition that took place last year and also to hear he’s selling a few bits in the South Willard store. So I decided to amalgamate the lot into one post for you all so you can see what his works are about and the aesthetic that he goes for.

Ian is actually an artist living and working in San Francisco, his works have been shown all over the world including here in Europe and Japan. He looks to explore over production of products and the seduction of collectibility through his works, he also likes to play with issues of usability, durability and worth. You can definitely see this in his ceramic works above which are not only bold and powerful, maybe relating to wealth, but are also intriguing in their shape and form. It makes you think “what can I actually use this for?”, which is quite a contrast to your normal pottery that always tends to speak of functionalism. It reminds me of Peter Shire in a few ways, another artist who I wrote about this year, his works initiate the old battle of form vs function, something I think about often as a designer myself.

Obviously from the pictures here you see a mixture of work and I was particularly admiring an exhibition titled “Wearing” at the Rena Bransten gallery as it showcased some cool sculptures and lovely pieces of ceramics. Maybe the simplistic and minimal versions are more my cup of tea. I even enjoy the innovative floating shelf to go alongside these in the third picture down, could definitely see this working in a modern house of some sort. Overall I’d recommend checking out his portfolio via the link below, he’s got some different bits and bobs which might inspire you today.

www.ianiswas.com

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