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| ceramic artist | Reviews | ||
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"Everywhere in her work are reflections of the places she has been."
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 The
artist stands on the seat of a wooden stool and peels off plastic
that protects a towering trunk of damp clay. The massive sculpture
has several distant cousins sprouting from the floor of Sana Musasama"s
studio in Jersey City's warehouse district. Over a year or so, Musasama
hopes to grow a forest of 20 ceramic maples for her Maple Tree series,
based on her readings about an abolitionist movement among Native
Americans and Africans who espoused maple-syrup tapping as an alternative
to bringing enslaved West Africans to the West Indies to harvest sugarcane.
With the help of several top-drawer awards, including a $9,000 Pollock-Krasner Grant, Musasama may have a jungle by January. She spend up to 45 hours a week at the studio; sometimes she toils around the clock and through the weekend. "I may stop for a walk or dinner, but never for lunch. "says Musasama, who teaches part-time at the Dalton "School in Manhattan and at the Community College of Philadelphia and an evening a week at Greenwich House Pottery in New York. Some of her studio time is spent "daydreaming, reading or pushing the clay around to see if it speaks to me, "she says. Her surname, Musasama, pays homage to two Ghanaian chiefs, Musa and Sama, who looked after her during her sojourns in West Africa. The artist, whose original name was Sana Wallace, has also traveled to India, Latin America, Europe, Japan, Montana and Nevada. Everywhere in her work are reflections of the places she has been. "I want to give information about what spurs me to create, "Musasama explains. "At the same time I want viewers to be ale to bring their own understanding to my pieces." |
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