Piped Dream Studio
“I like to keep moving and only make small collections of work. Each piece is unique and individual, I make each piece by hand.”
Piped Dream Studio
by Ebony Russell
Ebony Russell
Piped Dream Studio
Ebony Russell is the Sydney based artist behind experimental ceramics brand Piped Dream Studio. Pushing the envelope, she has found her place in the new wave of artists questioning the traditional conceptions of the porcelain medium. Gravity defying ribbons of pale pink lay upon towers of whipped cream to create intricate and delectable rococo-esque statues - think wedding cake meets Marie Antoinette meets fine china. A contemporary ceramicist, lecturer, masters of Fine Art graduate and a mother, her work for Piped Dreams delves into a time before all these achievements and into the nostalgic bedroom of a younger Ebony.
Ebony's Beginnings
Ebony’s beginnings were on a small farm in the humble town of Colac. Imagine a regional country town where department malls are swapped with independently owned stores and time seems to run a little slower. Untouched rainforests stretch far to the coasts where the ocean is deep blue and locals enjoy their private swimming bays. A perfect place for a child to grow up, Ebony has fond memories of her upbringing in the small town. Ebony’s love of art stems back to this era in her childhood and it has placed great influence thematically in her current art practice. Looking back to that time, she says “As a teenager I wished to study ceramics at university and always wanted to be an art teacher and artist”.
Growing up, Ebony would follow her teenage dreams and study several different arts related degrees in university. Ceramics at Monash University, Art education at The University of Melbourne and most recently a masters of fine art at The National Art School; her expansive educational background led her to become an art teacher working in arts education for many years. All the while studying, Ebony had also been creating. Ceramics was consistent in her life and as she honed her craft, her unique techniques were becoming all the more present in her growing oeuvre.
Longing, desire, lust. The way that we crave things, objects, flavour. I want to tap into those feelings.
Inspiration
Whipped cream, mont blanc, tiaras and butterflies. Oozing the childhood nostalgia of an Australian preteen girl; Ebony sculpts messages of familiarity, desire and vulnerability. Sickly sweet caricatures of the feminine adolescence brings a kitschy humour to heavier messages of the societal paradigm of gender. When asked about what emotions she tries to evoke, Ebony replied with “Longing, desire, lust. The way that we crave things, objects, flavour. I want to tap into those feelings.”
In her current stage of her art repertoire, Ebony focuses on dessert-like textures made from porcelain clay in techniques that are usually restricted to cake decorating. The medium of porcelain as well as its execution in Ebony’s works, brings the notion of how domestic tasks are pointlessly gendered and critiques the historical reputation of porcelain as an effeminate material.
Design Process
In an inner city ceramics studio located in Glebe, Sydney, Ebony spends her time throwing, firing and glazing amongst other experimental ceramicists. Interestingly, her distinctual construction method follows a technique that is usually exclusive to the kitchen rather than the ceramics studio with her tools of trade being found in the local cake decorating shop.
Like the name Piped Dream suggests, Ebony’s distinct whipped cream textures are all created with the help of a piping bag. Using her piping bag as you would when icing a cake, she forms fluid shapes through layers upon layers of piped swirls void of any base structure. Referring to her free-handed approach, Ebony explained her design process saying that “I'll have a loose idea of the shape but need to respond to the way that the pieces move and grow with each layer”. No one piece follows a strict formula but rather like the fortuitous results of the ceramics medium, the joy comes from the unique outcome of each creation.
