KATY FISCHER- Strata

STRATA © Katy Fischer 2017, hand-built and custom-glazed ceramic tile and Byzantine smalti glass tile, NYCT Bay Ridge Avenue Station, Brooklyn NY

---

www.katyfischer.com

---

Katy Fischer’s ceramic sculpture is reminiscent of archeological discoveries.

She is inspired by the way ancient artifacts become evocatively abstract shapes once they are broken, weathered and displaced, not unlike the bits of debris deposited around the city.

The shard-like fragments read as both found and made, broken and whole, abstract and representational and suggest intriguing connections and possible histories.

---

---

---

“Strata” references local history using imagined artifacts inspired by objects that could have been unearthed during the Bay Ridge Av station’s excavation in the early 20th century.

The hand-glazed ceramic forms evoke items such as bonefish hooks used by the Lenape, the Delft pottery shards of early Dutch settlers, and Colonial-era tools and shoe buckles.

Tiffany vases and railroad spikes mark the transition from farmland to a residential community, with the arrival of the subway.

To aid in wayfinding, the contrasting background colors refer to the cyclical rhythms of the daily commute.

---

---