Virginia Scotchie is a ceramic artist and area head of ceramics at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. She holds a BFA in Ceramics from UNC-Chapel Hill and in 1985 completed her Master of Fine Arts at Alfred University in New York.Virginia exhibits her work extensively throughout the United States and abroad and has received numerous awards including the Sydney Meyer fund international ceramics premiere award from the Shepperton Museum in Victoria, Australia. She has lectured internationally on her work and been an artist in residence in Taiwan, Italy, Australia, and the Netherlands. Her clay forms reside in many public and private collections and reviews about her work appear in prestigious ceramic publications. Artist Statement“The idea of taking from one object and connecting it to another through the dissection of parts and pieces is a foundation of my recent work in ceramic sculpture. Combined with this is my interest in the relation of whole forms to that of fragments.Exploration in the studio is and on-going visual investigation of man-made and natural objects. Usually these consist of small things; ordinary in many ways but possessing an odd quirkiness that pulls me to them. In some cases, I do not know the objects’ particular purpose, function or where it may have originated. I feel this lack of knowledge allows me to see the object in a clearer light.In some of the pieces I have abstracted from personal objects that have been given to me or passed on to me from a family member. Usually, they are things that have no monetary value. An old pipe from my father’s, a funnel from my mother’s kitchen and an old bulb from the family Christmas tree. A recent object that falls into category is a handmade wooden tool that was fashioned by my Italian grandfather to plant his garden. Slender and pointed with a stump of a side handle this small tool fit the hand of my grandfather and served him well. For me it not only holds visual intrigue but also a connection to my memory of him and the things he loved.The worn, crusty surfaces on many of the pieces are created to give a sense of how time acts to make and unmake a form. This process can be seen in both natural and manmade objects.I do not wish for this work to be named or labeled, rather, it is my intention that through the borrowing and reformation of objects the work might trigger one to look closer and find beauty and intrigue in the humble, ordinary, and familiar objects that surround us.”