Interview with Katie Bonadies, February 2024
Bea Willemsen is a clay artist working almost exclusively in porcelain. They have been a member of RWS since September 2022.
Willemsen loves the challenge of porcelain because she believes that if she can sculpt with a clay so fussy she can make anything in any clay. She describes porcelain as willful and says that it has to be babied becuase the conditions need to be just right to achieve the flexibility of other clay bodies. She likens it to butter and it's no surprise that Willemsen chooses a food to illustrate what she means; a lof of her work depicts different foods both as adornments like in their pastry series and as functional forms such as their recent line of lidded heirloom tomato boxes or their perennial fennel bult bud vases. Other works are still lifes in clay that depict stacks of books with objects on top. All of their works are a joyful feast for the eyes and it's impossible to want just one.
Don't let their playfulness fool you; the work is the result of deep self exploration of lived experiences and origins of the self in queerness, mental health and mental illness, among other topics. Making food out of clay is a way for Willemsen to build a relationship with food that isn't predicated on cooking or personal consumption. Making sculpture is an act of taking those feelings 'out of body' and putting them out into the world. Willemsen loves having objects to pair with those explorations that reflect the self back in a completely new way. Plus, food art is a fun way to practice skills and build fine muscle movements. "Not every tomato is a profound healing moment," she says.
Her process is a balance between building with a specific goal in mind and a sense of 'muck around and see what happens'. The work that resonates most for her is when the concept is not forced and there’s no pressure to create something specific. It’s when she can be more curious that the ideas find their full form.
Like many things in Maine, there’s a seasonality to the way in which Willemsen works. After the holidays is when they make time to explore the big sculptural ideas that have been rattling around in their head for months or sometimes longer. Later in the year she’ll be in full production mode and create the work she sells at shows. Some of her large sculptures include an oversized gilded heart charm bracelet, an almost functional Juicy Couture purse–you’ll have to go to their Instagram account @moltenmud to see what’s inside–and giant tubes of toothpaste and baby sunscreen that were included in the RWS 20th anniversary show, “Cross-Section: Two Decades at Running With Scissors Art Studios”, at Cove Street Arts.
This year Willemsen is thinking about her winter project in a new way: as a group. She says she hasn’t really built work where multiple pieces tell a narrative instead of one. They say it takes them a long time to put words to thought and experience, “The feeling is this ocean, and then what I get out is a glass of tap water. It’s not that it’s not valid--it has some of the same elements and captures some of the essence--but it’s not what I wanted to communicate. There’s so much immensity and depth and then translating that into English feels weak.” That’s why she works in the third dimension; it has a tactile element that makes sense to her.
Willemsen has been working in clay since January 2020. She was on hiatus from wood carving while healing from an injury and had also previously worked in commercial photography. She jokes about how she always loved to play in mud as a kid and that her parents made fun of her for it. (Building with plastic squares felt too restrictive.) It makes complete sense they turned out to be a potter. As an adult, she discovered clay on a whim. She had taken a class in high school and in college but didn’t really connect with clay until she and a friend were looking for fun things to do during the pandemic that didn't center around going for food and drinks. She connected with clay in an entirely different way and spent hours in the studio, uninterested in formal instruction, just wanting to be with the materials.
Clay makes sense to her in a way no other medium has. She even turned the second bedroom in her apartment into a studio when her roommate moved out. They say clay is intimately tied to the human experience; that we have always needed vessels to hold things and a malleable material to create them with, "It's a wonderful universal starting point, a ball of clay, that you can take in any direction. No two people make the same work." The possibilities feel endless and Willemsen doesn't think they'll ever reach a point where they've done it all and are finished with clay.
Contact Willemsen through their website, moltenmud.com, by emailing beawillemsens@gmail.com, or messaging @moltenmud on Instagram.
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