Review: Stillness and silence in the work of Jennifer Lee

Jennifer Lee’s pots possess an elemental purity that invokes a response in kind. They enter the body, the soul, as a gift of stillness, silence, wholeness. Born in Scotland and based in London, Lee has had three previous shows at Frank Lloyd over the past decade, each one an occasion for quiet astonishment.

The ten recent vessels here are beautifully continuous with what came before--shapes of elegant simplicity in a palette suggestive of sand, peat moss, rust, damp earth, iron and pale stone. Lee builds the pieces by hand, from a pinched base and coiled walls, using clay that she has mixed with metallic oxides acquired around the world. The oxides imbue the clay with both color and texture. One piece is striated with bands of umber, each ring edged with a bleached echo, reminiscent of the traces left on shore by receding waves. In another, titled “Sand-grained, olive smoked bands,” the discontinuous, darker wisps read as dense but ephemeral atmospheres.

Lee allows some of her mixed clays to mature for years, even decades, before using them, making the passage of time a key part of her process. More vast, geological time is suggested by the finished works, formed, it seems, by eons of shifting sedimentary strata. The evolution in Lee’s body of work is similarly slow, subtle and remarkable.

A group of Lee’s portrait-like preparatory drawings flesh out the show, as do two metallic particle drawings by Larry Bell and two sculptures by Craig Kauffman. The atmospheric pieces by Bell, especially, complement Lee’s work well. The elegant installation of the pots on two ovoid platforms reinforces the rhythms animating them from within. For all the calm they invoke, the pieces are charged with the motion of the swirls that encircle them. Several, with tilted mouths and diagonal veins, are made more dynamic by their asymmetry. Their implicit movement suggests the shy whirl of demure dervishes.

For all their stillness, then, Lee’s pieces do dance in a way, and for all their silence, they also, quite literally, sing. On her website (jenniferlee.co.uk), Lee posts recordings of the tones produced by tapping a group of pots shown here in 2005. Each is a resonant bell, delivering a clear, primal tone. Lee also records the rhythmic patter of the vessels rocking. The sounds come as a surprise, but also seem natural extensions of the works’ complete sensory presence.

Frank Lloyd Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 264-3866, through August 18. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.franklloyd.com