Lauren Skelly Bailey is a ceramic artist based out of Long Island, NY. She holds a Master of Fine Arts, Ceramics from Rhode Island School of Design. As well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Adelphi University in Fine Arts.

Skelly works in layers, in a sometimes modular recursive process. The foundation of her ceramic practice is her relationship with abstraction, the vessel, nature, color, and texture. Her works are formed by integrating the use of coiling, pinching, painting, and thrown clay structures to connect her sculptural vessels and corals. Her practice takes lessons from unexpected results from the kiln, as well as the layering of hand-painted surfaces.

Residing close to the sea, Skelly’s sculptural language draws from an interest and awareness of endangered surfaces found in the ocean. The sea wears and ages things in it, but these things then can become a platform for new growth. Like the cyclical life of marine animals living thriving and building anew onto old worn environments, Skelly’s sculptures emulate this process; combining disparate surfaces and finishes. Different shapes and tones, employing organic gestural formations. Expressing thought and emotion in her creations.

Skelly uses discarded forms by repurposing older existing work in an act of collaging and assembling pieces. By incorperating older thrown pieces, a bowl for the base of her pieces. By revisiting early work this allows for a second chances and new structures to be found.

What may have once been a humble bowl, might now be given a chance to be a larger, more complex and varied reef-like vessel exploring color, and dimension. This method has enabled her to continue the journey of her forms and their surface through creating a new outlet for parts of the former, to transform into bigger statement pieces that elaborately hold a room.