Suzanne Vilmain

Suzanne Vilmain~ Raku Ceramics

Born and raised in Iowa, eldest of eight, educated Catholic grade and high school, graduated with a BA in English from University of Northern Iowa 1967-1971 taught high school in Iowa, junior high in Los Alamos, SFCC & IAIA in Santa Fe, Highlands in Las Vegas and workshops in book binding, letterpress and suminagashi. Vilmain has kept a journal since age 19 / 1968 — a writing practice that has evolved from calligraphy taught by nuns to computers to printmaking to graphic design to letterpress to bookmaking to ceramics…… a visual language
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT ART AND WHOLENESS IN LEARNING

a poem by William Stafford

A RITUAL TO READ TO EACH OTHER

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god him we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each other’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider —
lest the parade of our mutual life gets lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

page 137 - The Crossing Point
selected talks and writings
1973

Fiery, and emphatic, Vilmain's Raku ceramics has never been seen before. She accomplishes an array of dazzling miraculous, sometimes blindingly shiny, or otherwise damp and foggy, atmospheric surfaces of fused smoke and metal based glazes. Vilmain mixes up a wide range of colored finishes - copper, pink, glossy black pools, a mossy green lace or meat tenderizer needles repetitively stamped and pressed onto the body of the clay yielding a complex visual vocabulary. Fomenting multi stripped or plaid brushed plates, platters, pyramids, peeling pomegranates, melted oozed marbles within lidded boxes or bowls, stacks of bubbled and fried matte-glazed burnt dice and phenomenally towering, teetering, cat-in-a-hat hand-built vessels.
Spark = Smoke = Joy VILMAIN RAKU.