Karlene Jean Kantner is a ceramic artist and pupil of the garden. Her studio practice begins at the work table and expands to the firing, to the potting bench, to the landscape, and then to the seed. She hand builds her forms using coils and clay strips that are ripped from very thin slabs. One layer at a time she adds clay, secured with a small paddle, to build sedimentary texture. In each piece she aims to introduce a geologic monument to a figurative form. With deep sentimentality, she integrates plants into her vessels who become small bodies that rest in the participatory webs of the natural world. Via her experimental projects, the work activates her senses, revealing heart space for little else than reverence and gratitude for biodiverse landscapes and the possibilities of the garden.
She holds a Bachelors of Fine Art in Ceramics from the University of Montana where
she received honors for community arts engagement and teaching. She was a recent artist in
residence at the Flower City Arts Center in Rochester, NY and now resides and works in her
studio in western Massachusetts. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Montana
Museum of Art and Culture and has most recently shown in a solo exhibition at the Berkshire
Botanical Gardens. Currently, Karlene lives and works at Bark Mill Pond in the Berkshires where
she continues her research in a land and garden based ceramic practice.
Artist’s Statement
Growing potatoes in these pots felt simultaneously like play and prayer but certainly not like
work. As a first step, I placed seed potatoes in the base of each pot with a mixture of rich soil and
organic matter. Sprouts popped early in the season. It was hot and it rained heavily. Through the
weeks, sprouts grew upward and out of the pot, and as a farmer builds a mound of soil over
potato foliage in the field, I set in a new ceramic section, filled with new soil, atop the previous
layer to build height. Carefully timing each new layer, I repeated this process several times
throughout the season. I planted six varieties of potatoes that flowered nodding tissue blossoms
of white, pink or purple. Potato blooms don’t usually last much more than a day. Though I
hoped a healthy lumper harvest was growing within the walls of the pots, I felt a light hearted
nudge within myself that perhaps I went to all of this trouble to grow fleeting potato flowers.
Potato Pots Growing Season
