Hagenclay: The Sculpture Portfolio of Erika Pazmandi Hagen
Untitled, ceramic with cold finish and patina
Erika Pazmandi Hagen is a ceramic artist who works under the studio name Hagenclay. In her sculptures, Erika blends human, often feminine figures with abstracted detail and an appreciation for novel texture.
I quite enjoy the artist’s recent sculptural pieces, made using clay with a cold finish and patina. The resulting works have a coppery, metallic sheen, dappled with moments of deeper, rust-like weathering. These pieces carry an unexpected conceptual weight -- one gets the sense that they could have been dredged up from the ocean floor after a thousand years, revealing more mysteries than answers.
Erika’s figurative sculpting is almost reminiscent of Shoko Cesar, though Erika tends to reign her works into more recognizable proportions. Still, the artist’s sculptures express not only an attention to detail, but an appreciation for the nature of clay itself, and the semi-random, accidental forms that arise in the sculpting process.
#1 (from series Actors), porcelain (wheelthrown, sculpted), underglaze, engobe, oxide