2007 Delray Beach Film Festival Awards

The Delray Beach Film Festival is March 13th to 18th 2007.

I have created the awards for this year's ceremony.
Visit http://www.dbff.us/ for more information about the festival.

Artist Statement

There is something very satisfying and yet quite strange about being a maker of handmade objects in today’s world. It is easy for technology to produce exquisite cups, bowls and plates at a rate ten thousand fold faster than I can. But, as I put in countless hours of work for slim earnings, there is nothing that will replace the intimacy I experience with each object. From a slosh of mud, my hands manipulate every molecule of clay turning it into volume and shape; texture, colour, strength and utility. And hopefully beauty. I know every piece’s flaws and weak spot. And I also come to see its strengths. This dialogue enlivens my days alone in the studio, keeping me company. The pieces offer criticism and opinions – they will argue with me, enabling me to perceive things I hadn’t before. Making objects “from scratch” is empowering. I know that unfulfilled with a particular piece, I constantly have the power to improve and the tools to eventually create anything that I desire. This desire to create forms unmade, to produce objects that will live and witness a person’s life, a family’s meals, or a living room’s history is the reason why I make objects. It is a privilege and a freedom in an age where so much is given to us in a mold.

Of French and Chinese heritage and born in London, my work often sits on the edge of the wabisabi aesthetic of Japan and the canon of proportions of the west. That dialogue is constant in my life and work – always swaying between two, belonging to neither. This distaste for being pinned down into one category means that I am naturally drawn to abstraction which is open ended and subject to each individual’s lense.

Artist Biography

Chloe Le Pichon makes both functional and sculptural ceramic work. Of French and Chinese heritage and born in London she draws from diverse cultural traditions. Often referring to organic form and retaining an earthly quality, her work remains delicate. Graduating from Swarthmore College, Phi Beta Kappa, she studied under Syd Carpenter who is a talented sculptor and a very active member of the Philadelphia art community. Every piece in Chloe's Solo Senior Thesis Exhibit was sold and many commissions resulted from the first viewing of her work. She was singled out by William Daley, the world renowned ceramicist, who visited her show and was impressed with her skills and potential. She worked with ceramicist Doug Herren and Syd Carpenter, assisting in the Art department at Swarthmore College the year following graduation. She then went to work for the non-profit called the “Clay Studio” in Philadelphia, volunteering in their gallery. She became the studio technician for their outreach program called “The Claymobile”. She currently teaches clay work with The Claymobile progam in many of the inner city schools of Philadelphia and New Jersey, but also in disabled adult centers, senior centers and shelters.
She is now an emerging artist in the Philadelphia art scene. She exhibited work at the Sandy Webster Gallery in Rittenhouse Square this summer. Chloe won the Main Line Art Center’s Franklin and Shirley Poul Award for Art Pottery at the 69th Annual Member’s Exhibition. She recently began working out of her own space and her work is presently for sale at Earthworks contemporary crafts gallery in Narberth, PA and Grove Aurora in Aurora NY.