Case Study: to/from

Porcelain Wall Installation, Artifact NoDa In collaboration with ISG

Project Overview

to/from is a site-specific porcelain wall installation commissioned for the mailroom of Artifact NoDa, a new luxury residential building in Charlotte, North Carolina. The project came through ISG, whose procurement team sources art thoughtfully for the residential interiors they design. The mailroom, where every resident passes through daily, was identified as a place where art belonged.

Twenty-five handmade porcelain envelopes span a ten-foot wall above the mailboxes. Each one is modeled after a standard business envelope, cut from a slab and folded by hand. Each one is different.

The Challenge

The site itself shaped the work. Art in a mailroom, above actual mailboxes, in a building where people come and go quickly: how to bring the same reverence to that space as to any other.

The other challenge was structural. Hanging ceramics cleanly on a wall is a problem I solve differently every time. For this installation, each envelope needed to float with no visible hardware. I cut two notches into the back of each piece: one for a bracket, one for a security t-screw. Then I mapped every envelope onto a template before install day so the placement would run smoothly on site.

The Process

Each envelope starts as a rolled slab of porcelain, cut to shape and folded in the same gesture you'd use with paper, but in clay, which means working quickly and reading the material as you go. The flap sits slightly open. The fold carries the memory of where pressure was applied. Each piece lands a little differently, which is the nature of working this way, and also the point.

The material is unglazed porcelain, fired to cone 6. At that temperature, porcelain vitrifies on its own and doesn't need glaze to be durable. For sculpture, the raw clay body is often the right choice. The natural matte surface reads close in value to the textured wallcovering behind it, so the piece works primarily through shadow and dimension. Each one is the same size, but the handmade differences between them, in fold, in crease, in how the flap sits, give the composition life.

This work connects to an earlier body of studio work, particularly the Stacks series. Bending porcelain like paper, and to look like paper, has been a sustained practice. Paper was an important material reference for a long time: a journalistic object, a place for reflection. Those earlier concepts don't always carry into a commercial space directly, but the objects often do. The work can speak to an audience in its own way, on its own terms.

The Final Work

The twenty-five envelopes are all the same size and hung level, but the handmade variation between them, each fold landing a little differently, each flap opening at its own angle, makes the composition read as something looser than that. From across the room, the wall reads as movement. Up close, each piece is its own small object, with its own crease, its own particular fold.

The title to/from names what envelopes do. It also names what the space does: a place of sending and receiving, of things passing through on their way somewhere else.

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Tags: Commercial Commissions, Residential, Porcelain, Site-Specific, Charlotte