Much has been written about Linda Sormin’s large ceramic installation works, vast multi-part sculptures that dominate the gallery as much as they dominate the literature about her. Their impressive and immersive scale is central to her contemporary use of clay, but her practice is also populated by smaller scale sculptures, those that would fit within the circumference of a wide embrace. Within these, the viewer can offer attention to the detail of Sormin’s practice, both physically and conceptually.
This essay focuses on three of Sormin’s recent small sculptures: , , and , all made in the last three weeks of Sormin’s 2021 summer residency at the EKWC (European Ceramic Work Centre) in the Netherlands. Sormin made these three sculptures whilst firing her large installation works for the seminal exhibition (2022) at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). There is a temptation to see these smaller works as preliminary sketches for her large installations, however, often her work at a smaller scale occurs upon returning to the studio after the installation of a large sculpture. Sormin is able to condense her ideas from the size of the
