Brian Rochefort doesn’t seem to be worried about tracking dirt into his pristine El Sereno studio—in fact, he recreates it. Then spray-paints it. And fires it. Again and again. The artist has been adding to his Crater series lately—heavy ceramic forms seeming to bubble over, opened up at the top, hollow, and about three feet in diameter and height. Their staggering surface variety doesn’t make them appear haphazard; rather, these fat, warm objects dressed in layers of multi-colored and -textured treatments look as they’ve been excavated this way from an untapped dimension.
They may have been imagined as an otherworldly object, but their origins are most definitely Earthly. Though his earlier series of containers molded after paint cans had referenced photographs of the madness of Francis Bacon’s disheveled studio, the artist’s more recent works resemble the wonders of Ecuador and Tanzania. Traveling on his own extensively throughout the swaths of wilderness and protected areas found in central South America and the East African coast, Rochefort loosely modeled these vessels after volcanoes and actual crater lakes in Belize and the Galápagos Islands. He painted the mint, emerald, and moss tints after visiting the cloud forests dotting the Nicaraguan jungle lands, along with shades of canary and pineapple and candy apple-red; the azure, indigo, and snowy Arctic shades mirror skylines and shores; the roughed-up surfaces and rainbow pastiche can be traced back to the dazzling coral reefs blooming in the waters off of Zanzibar.
“Notice that there are no fingerprints on them. They look like they’re from outer space or a protected barrier reef,” says Rochefort on a sunny December afternoon. “I wanted to really push the materials so that they almost reach their breaking point.” Moving from hand-building to throwing each massive lump of clay has allowed for a somewhat consistent size and shape of each Crater, though that might be their only commonality. Once fired, each one is saturated in pigment and submerged in mud, cracking as it dries. They’re fired again six or seven times, each round airbrushed in color gradients; and 15 to 20 glazes, either flecked, glossy, emulsions; gooey, pastel globs; pebbly, textured, muddy drips; or outrageous fluorescent camouflage. In advance of 2030, his upcoming solo show of 14 from this series at Van Doren Waxter, on New York’s Upper East Side, he’s working his way through a purple phase—one of the most complex hues to get right in the kiln. And colors on the horizon? He’s spending three weeks in Guadalajara in residency for L.A.’s Mistake Room; future plans include visiting Rwanda’s volcanoes, cloud formations, and Silverback gorillas; and Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay’s Pantanal wetlands region.
“My glazes and surfaces are more consistent now. I’ve been working with them enough that I know what’s going to happen.” They emerge from each crevice so organically, it’s difficult to see what’s intentional and what’s erratic in each of them. “The amazing thing [about clay] is that even if you’re a master potter, there’s always still an element of surprise.”