Ellen Moses is a studio potter working in New York City, who creates ceramic objects that gracefully combine functionality with a modern sculptural presence. Her collection of home products is marked by the elegant interplay of the fine art and craft elements of her medium, balancing a sound sense of material design with an intuitive sensibility for color, texture and form.

Each object created by Ellen Moses is possessed of a formal singularity and stands alone as an original work of art. And yet, each piece also speaks to the broader aesthetic of her collection, with many of the individual vessels conceived as parts of a fluid sculptural composition. The individual form comes to influence and echo the design of the whole, and vice versa.

As objects of art and use, Ellen Moses’s vessels convey their meaning both visually and tactilely. The undulating surface topographies offer vivid material traces of the artist’s process, inviting users to explore the objects intimately with their own hands. The spare decorative patterns heighten the surface rhythms, and the subtle palimpsest-like layering of colors poetically suggest the object’s own formation over time. The earthen exteriors of the vessels, like ornamental carapaces, open up to reveal pristine and delicate interior spaces. Monochromatic and iridescent, the interior surfaces present a brilliant palette for all things that may come to be contained within. [Rory O’Dea, Whitney Museum of American Art]