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PrintPlateful of commentary
The very fact that you can hold one of Cynthia Vardhan’s “commemorative” plates and be grasping the vanishing of time and place is a testament to their subtle power.
“My work is a commentary on the effects of globalization on rural America and the wholesale whitewashing of history,” Vardhan says. “It’s about the substitution of a homogenous vision for an organic view. I grew up in Virginia and when I go home I can see all the changes, things just disappearing. I see massive stores like Costco and Lowe’s and Home Depot replace farms and independent businesses. It was so painful to see that I had to do something.”
Vardhan’s medium was clay—she had been a ceramic artist since her teens. So she decided to make commemorative plates, typically a medium of kitsch, but in her hands suddenly a vessel for mourning loss and memorializing what had been.
At her studio on the third floor of her house, Vardhan shows me the plates as the kiln is firing. Each plate is based upon the vernacular of commemorative dishes. They have an intricately detailed rim, and the interior is a perspective drawing.
One features a horse farm that’s been rezoned for off-road vehicle usage. The rim, like a legend, tells the secret past of the farm that will become a chain restaurant. Another plate about Mechanicsville records the history of a plantation. In the center of the plate is a drawing of the original house and the hills that were part of the landscape. But along the hills now are new incongruous McMansions.
The plates allude to the damaging of historical memory that links generations to each other and the replacement of the natural world with the so-called “real” world of tawdry buildings, blighted nature and runaway consumerism. In a real sense, the commemorative plates are about the loss of meaning that is undercutting the culture. (To see Vardhan’s work, go to cynthiavardhan.com.)
Vardhan, 29, started doing the plates around Christmas time two years ago. She wanted to buy up the land that was being destroyed, but couldn’t afford to. Instead, she decided to archive the disappearing landscape.
To do the plates, Vardhan photographs the buildings and artifacts and collages them into Photoshop. After printing them, she traces over the images. Finally, she transposes the sketches onto decal paper, which are then transferred onto the plates.
Vardhan makes many other ceramic vessels. Some are decorative, but others contain mysterious maps that call to mind Google directions. Only Vardhan’s denote the difference between factual and remembered geography, with some of her maps being imaginary and others real.
Vardhan was drawn to working with clay because it produced something functional. “Clay is more forgiving than wood,” she notes. But clay also comes directly from the earth, which makes it the perfect vehicle for storytelling.
Although she was talented at drawing, Vardhan didn’t get a glimmer that she would be an artist until she was in college at William & Mary, with its excellent ceramics department. Sensing that a liberal arts degree wouldn’t get her far, she went to Rochester Institute of Technology in New York for industrial design. But she never worked full time, if only because ceramics was too tempting.
These days she works for CCAD as a director of advising. But she spends most of her spare time making pots that she ships all over the world. “It’s satisfying to create objects that other people have in their homes,” says Vardhan. “When I get fan mail that customers love my work, that it’s part of their day, I’m gratified.”
