Brook Trout Bottle with Stopper

Tim Christensen

Brook Trout Sgrafitto porcelain ceramic bottle with stopper by Tim Christensen Environmental Art Midcoast Maine Artisan Store The Good Supply Pemaquid Made in USA
  • Brook Trout Sgrafitto porcelain ceramic bottle with stopper by Tim Christensen Environmental Art Midcoast Maine Artisan Store The Good Supply Pemaquid Made in USA
  • Brook Trout Sgrafitto porcelain ceramic bottle with stopper by Tim Christensen Environmental Art Midcoast Maine Artisan Store The Good Supply Pemaquid Made in USA
  • $550.00

Along with the longest coastline in the contiguous United States, Maine is home to thousands of lakes and rivers - waterways teeming with life in constant motion. As an avid fisherman, artist Tim Christensen looks to the streams and ponds that surround his studio for inspiration. Casting a line out over the glassy surface in hopes of catching the eye, and appetite, of a fish. He is often successful as he knows these waters well.

Skimming along the rocky bottom, brook trout weave through grasses and dancing air bubbles. Their spotted bodies and powerful tails catch the light, alerting the patient fisherman of their location. Etched surrounding a sloping-shouldered bottle, topped with a flared flange lid, the only way this group is caught is in suspended animation.

- Measures 3.5” x 8”
- Salt-fired porcelain
- Sgraffito
- Wash by hand

Ceramic artist Tim Christensen divides his time between Portland and Downeast Maine. At his off-grid studio Tim finds inspiration for his porcelain pieces. Schools of herring, flocks of chattering songbirds, and all matter of sea life are skillfully carved on the surfaces of his hand-thrown and constructed forms.

Tim began working in clay in 1999, and he has been etching his black and white pieces since 2004. Using the centuries-old decorative technique of Sgraffito, Tim carves intricate worlds teeming with life and energy. Firing much of his work at Watershed Center for Ceramic Art in Newcastle, Maine, Tim finds that the collaborative Midcoast institution's salt and wood-fire kilns add variety and allow for the possibility of happy accidents, which are common in the ceramic world and offer welcome play on the artist's meticulous carvings.

Tim has shown his work around the world and recently completed his first book. Written with co-author Carri Lange, “Reflect, Adapt, and Persevere” he tells of his travels and thoughts on environmental philosophy.

From the Artist:

My work is about the ever-changing web of relationships that surround us. Individuals make contact to create relationships, relationships collide to create systems. These systems change over time in response to the other systems around them. I envision my world as an infinite collection of active counterparts, individuals symbiotically wriggling and moving and jostling for space and resources.

In this sea of systems, of relationships, I sit and try to untangle it, sit and try to communicate what I see changing, being created, or disappearing into the past.

This is why I work in our most durable medium, porcelain, and in our longest unbroken historical record, pottery. My work, functional in the information I convey, will be understandable to anyone with an eyeball and the ability to think abstractly.

My goal is to make work which still speaks clearly in 10,000 years, and more importantly, to convey the complexity and richness of the world in which I am most fortunate to live.

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