Bio

Participating in the tradition of using clay to make functional objects, Caroline Thomas (b. 1972 San Francisco) casts and hand-builds conventional vessels. She has also explored other types of “vessels,” however, such as banana peels, human heads, plastic or Styrofoam carryout cups, and even a motorcycle engine, investigating functionality and its effect on the status of art. Thomas is drawn to mass-produced household items that are generally valued for their function rather than their aesthetic quality. Domestic necessities like towels and pillows—when cast and placed alongside her cast or hand-built shelf brackets, takeaway cups, or paper-towel tubes—are given a primacy that they are not often accorded in everyday life. Calling attention to the often unnoticed but inherent aesthetic value of these typically discarded objects, Thomas’s sculptures exude a striking intimacy, their closeness to the body somehow emphasized by their being on display. She reminds us of the mysteries that surround what we think we know about objects and their presumed categories.