Molly Hatch, Linea Stack, USA, 2021

In the past decade the name Molly Hatch has become synonymous with contemporary ceramics. Hatch’s ceramic installations, inspired by historical decoration, have been exhibited and collected all over the world and garnered her a loyal and fervent following. Todd Merrill Studio has represented Hatch since 2013.

In 2022 Molly Hatch took part in Making Place Matter, an ambitious and experimental exhibition that marked the opening of The Clay Studio’s newly built 34,000 sq ft expanded home. Located in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, the Clay Studio is a non-profit centered around the art and craft of contemporary ceramics. Making Place Matter invited three leading ceramic artists to explore the idea of place with regard to personal history, cultural heritage, and social justice. Drawing on her ancestral heritage, Hatch’s grand-scale “plate paintings” take historical patterns – often from porcelain plates – as their source. Hatch seamlessly merges the past into the present as she enlarges historical ornament, vaulting it into near-abstraction.

The idea of lineage informs two works in the exhibition, titled Linea and Linea Stack. Hatch was the third in a line of women artists; both her grandmother and mother were painters. In honoring them, she chose a floral textile from the collection of the Cooper Hewitt that is reminiscent of pattern she would have seen in her childhood. Linea Stack, her most conceptually abstract and complex work to date, takes the same motifs from Linea and moves them off the wall in an effort to monumentalize their visual power. The floral (history) and snakeskin (cycle) patterns converge, while the tight composition of honeycomb shaped bricks appear to propel themselves forward revealing gold luster sides. The gold edges, an exaggerated imitation of a gold border on a china plate, represent an inevitable momentum.

As Hatch works on a commission basis, custom works may be requested.

Medium: Slip cast, hand-painted porcelain, underglaze, glaze, gold luster