Simone Leigh

Jug, 2022

Jug, ceramic, 61 inches tall, 2022, by Simone Leigh.

This monumental jug (over 5 feet tall!) by Simone Leigh is on display as part of the show Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina at the Met Museum. The show, which is on display through February 5, includes numerous historical stoneware pots from the Old Edgefield district, along with contemporary work from Leigh, Woody De Othello, Adebunmi Gbadebo, Theaster Gates, and Robert Pruitt.

The thought-provoking show is rather densely installed and almost everything is behind a case, but this sculptural jug is a real showstopper. It references the shape of some of the small face jugs in the show, but includes oversized cowrie shells (which are frequently found in Leigh’s sculptures) and is finished in a luscious satin glaze.

Here’s a detail shot:

In the catalog, there’s a great conversation between Leigh and the historian Jason R. Young. Here’s an excerpt:

Jason R. Young: You say you were interested first in making water pots. Were you drawn to the form itself or to the materiality of the clay?

Simone Leigh: I was drawn to the idea of a handmade readymade and how these beautiful objects were valued and why. As far as formal concerns, I felt these objects were modernist masterpieces. I was also drawn to the fact that there’s clay covering the whole earth that is available to everyone, unlike so many raw materials acquired through violent extraction. The material connects to time from a geological perspective. That process was beautiful to me. I was interested in the feminist implications of a tradition most often restricted to women and that so many who worked in it were anonymous. I think there’s no Black woman artist who doesn’t have to come to terms with the fact that their foremothers are largely anonymous. The first ceramist that I was aware of was Ladi Kwali from Nigeria. And the first person I saw working in a way I wanted to work was Magdalene Odundo. When I came to New York and was developing skills working with clay, I realized that people did not understand what I was trying to do as a conceptual enterprise. So I abandoned the idea of being an artist who worked in the field of ceramics and just became this kind of weirdo sculptor.

JRY: That was a very brave decision to make. Another artist might have decided to move into a different medium, but you stuck with it.

SL: I was really interested in coming to New York and being int he art world as an intellectual activity. We already had Duchamp, using a ceramic object, make it clear that anything could be art. But when I came to New York, I was told that this material was not something I could use seriously in my conceptual work. So that made me dig in my heels.

To read the full conversation, check out the catalog at bookshop.org or abebooks.