Mona Seno
Duration: March-april 2021
Mona Seno is ceramics/sculpture educator who will be on sabbatical in the spring and will be at NHCP to focus on making work for her solo show in the Fall 2021 at Northfield Mount Hermon Gallery in Massachusetts. She will continue to explore the intersection of ceramics and installation by working with her homemade paper clay, creating sculptural vessels with very delicate edges (thin, gill-like slabs) and abstract forms, and developing a ceramic wall installation consisting multiple forms. Being in New Harmony will help her to focus solely on this work and be inspired or influenced by new surroundings, people, and ideas.
website: www.monamseno.com
quick facts
How many years have you been working as a clay artist? I've been working with clay since I was fourteen, so over twenty years.
What is your main clay body that you currently use? Cone 6 porcelain paper clay (porcelain slip mixed with abaca fibers).
What is the primary method you use for building your work? Currently, coil building.
What is your favorite studio tool? My new Shimpo banding wheel.
Do you have any future clay wishes or dreams? I would love to someday have my own business teaching community clay classes and selling my own work.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I love both working in clay and making site-specific installation art, combining my interests in ceramics and sculpture by making large sculptural vessels or wall installations consisting of multiple ceramic pieces. My work tends to be minimal and natural, delicate at times, and tending towards creating a spiritual, expansive experience. I am often inspired by nature.
Most recently I have been developing a body of work using paper clay, integrating very thin slabs with coil built vessels. I have also explored using paper alone (with diluted glue) to cast leaves and a tree, in order to utilize the transparency and strength of the paper fiber and recreate a small part of my favorite area of the NMH campus: the forest.
*Paper clay is a mixture of clay (about 80%) and cellulose fibers (about 20%), usually sourced from paper. These fibers form a network of hollow, water conducting tubes that run through the clay. The fibers help give structural strength and help move moisture through the piece, in the same way cellulose works to transport water in a plant from the roots to the leaves. Because of the pulp, paper clay is lighter than regular clay. Forms can be made extremely thin or very thick, or uneven. It is strongest at bone dry and most fragile bisqued, and forms can be built with bone dry pieces, bisque, or with slip. Thin slabs must be fired rapidly. Once fired the work is all clay (and glaze).
BIOGRAPHY
BORN: Manila, Philippines
Mona Martinez Seno was born in the Philippines, but grew up in Tokyo, Japan. Though she attended a small international Catholic school for girls, she was greatly influenced by Japanese culture, spirituality, and aesthetics. She found an affinity for clay in third grade and embraced ceramics as her primary area of study by the end of high school. She attended Brandeis University on a full international scholarship and majored in Fine Arts: Sculpture as well as completing the Education program. Having discovered installation art during a summer art program in France after her sophomore year, she developed this form of work in her senior year at Brandeis and during her MFA in Sculpture at Tyler School of Art.
Mona has been working as a ceramics and sculpture teacher for over 16 years mostly in boarding schools, and is grateful for her summers and generous professional development funds to further explore various ceramic and sculptural techniques (including stone carving, figurative and portrait sculpture, functional pottery, shino, raku and pit firing, 3D printing with clay, digital fabrication, paper clay, etc). Her most recent work involves installations of ceramic pieces on the wall and large sculptural vessels made of paper clay. She is currently the Visual Arts department chair at Northfield Mount Hermon and will be on sabbatical in the spring of 2021 to make work for a solo show in the school's gallery the following fall.