Eliza Au: Architecture, Ceramics, and the Pursuit of Serenity

For some artists, creative development follows a path of constant novelty, a perpetual search for new ways to interact with, and interpret the world. For others, creative growth moves along a more measured path, continually renewing and expanding core perceptions or insights. Eliza Au is an artist on this second path. Over the past ten years or so, her work has exhibited a progressive unfolding, with deepening and complex core ideas that center on a search for spiritual serenity in a chaotic and emotionally disturbing world. Her ceramic sculptures incorporate interlocking fields of repeating patterns; they resemble three-dimensional nets or weavings of dense but perforated forms. For Au, pattern and complexity function as stimuli; spiritual aids that lead the mind towards fulfilling resolutions.