How the crow guided Doylestown potter Lisa Naples.
Folklore around the world portrays the crow as a shape-shifter, a messenger and a resourceful problem-solver. It is no surprise that this mysterious bird turned potter Lisa Naples’ world upside-down.
Naples works in earthenware and stoneware in her Doylestown studio. Her recent work features the crow as a prominent narrative element. The bird gazes out from plates and pots and appears in three-dimensional form in portrait sculptures. On a visit to the studio, I asked if her inspiration lies in the flurry of wings fluttering at the feeders outside her window. This, apparently, is only part of the story.
Naples grew up in a large Italian family in which purposefulness was prized. This ethic continued into her pottery, which was for many years “strictly functional.” Naples became nationally recognized for her highly decorative utilitarian pottery, known for its meticulous surface brushwork, lush coloration and underlying sense of geometry. Decorated intricately inside and out, her soup tureen from this period illustrates this zealously precise style. Naples was engaged with this body of work for 15 years, until, abruptly, she longed for something different. In the artist’s words, she had “exhausted the conversation.”
When Naples most needed a change, the crow, that notorious trickster, came into her life. She was awarded an artist residency in Australia, where everything seemed backwards.
“People spoke English, but I couldn’t understand them,” she says. “It was July, but it was winter. They were driving cars, but they were on the other side of the street. I lived on the right side of the brain the whole time I was there.”
Naples vowed to open herself up to the situation and discard her former preconceptions.
Magpies, the Australian cousin to the American crow, gathered daily in the courtyard outside of the ceramics studio. “They were so majestic and full of themselves,” Naples says. “I wanted to draw them but didn’t see myself as someone who had that skill.” One day the door was left open and a magpie walked into the building and hopped over to her studio door. It stood there, cocked its head and gazed at her for a moment. Naples relented, thinking, Fine, I’ll draw you. Man, if there was ever a sign, that was it!
The crow became Naples’ muse. You can find it on her portrait plates, surrounded by adages and proverbial sayings. One plate features a quote from Buddha: “We increase our suffering by our attempts to avoid it.”
This practical advice could come from no better a source. In reality, crows are natural problem-solvers who aren’t daunted by their physical limitations. One South Pacific crow creates hooks from bits of wood to rake insects out of crevices. Such crow conduct inspired the story behind Aesop’s fable, in which a crow drops pebbles into a pitcher to cause the water level to rise and meet its beak.
Naples integrates this inspiring ethic into her work, such as another crow plate that offers the observation, “You aren’t human beings, you’re human doings.”
These works resonate with the viewer as timeless folktales. In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, the goddess Athena saves a virgin princess from Poseidon’s lecherous advances by turning the princess into a crow. In one Inuit legend, a crow brings daylight to a village that had lived in complete darkness. A crow in the Kasmir Indian legend Sankisar assists a young girl in becoming the king’s wife.
The interaction of humans and crows spans the breadth of world folklore. By incorporating crow imagery into her art, Naples infuses her pieces with our cultural associations of the crow as a magical character – sometimes helpful, sometimes deceptive, always ingenious.
As crow imagery alludes to an ancient theme, the surface of the pottery itself has an aged character. A teapot featuring a finial with hands holding an egg was slab-built in earthenware. Naples creates a rich surface by adding texture before dry-brushing it with colored slip (tinted clay) of a pudding-like consistency. The bird is then painted with more liquid slip. She then coats the entire piece with iron oxide, which eats into the slip to create a patina.
The story of how the crow guided Naples is much like other crow fables. It has a heroine. A crow communicates with a human. A magical transformation takes place. In the end, as with every timeless fable, there is a moral: listen to your heart, and move toward the change that you fear. In Naples’ most recent series of portrait sculptures, the crow comes to life in three-dimensional form. As in The Unopened Envelope, the crow presents this message to our heroine, and to all who care to listen.
Article by Heather Gibson
