Sally Saul - Over the River and Through the Woods

Sally Saul balances playful cheer with more heady reflections in her stylized ceramic sculptures. Her referential forms are nicely softened, leaving rounded edges and an affable sentiment pervading, even if melancholy still hangs in the distance. Saul's characters can feel like three-dimensional cartoon characters come to life, which invites the world in while also tugging at childhood nostalgia. The narratives Saul explores with clay and glaze document her quieter moments of existence, the natural world, and also those more effusive dimensions of lived experience and memory that are hard to put into words. In Over the River and Through the Woods, a dreamy air prevails. Saul's sculptures feel intimate and expansive, and when installed together, they become a motley group of like-minded humans, creatures, and trees that share in good nature and the affirmation of being with one another. They seemingly have emerged from the wooded paths, riverbanks, and skies above after a long trip. Now landed, the noise of the outside world recedes, and something more essential comes into focus. A quiet focus and a sense of calm yield a measured, meditative assessment of the times that lead her here. A sense of repose is embedded in many of Saul's sculptures, heightening the languid atmosphere in which her contemplative forms exist. Bliss surrounds them—not exuberant or fleeting, but steady and restorative. It is the quiet pleasure of the journey and of allowing yourself to be content in a moment of stillness. Clay, with its capacity to be held, touched, and transformed, becomes the ideal medium for Saul's poetic inquiry. The pieces bear imprints of pressure and change, and the surfaces feel accumulated, as though they have lived through something rather than simply been made.