Rebecca Hannon

What is black and white and red all over?

It is a riddle, and child’s play, but this time it is not a newspaper.

Paper-thin porcelain, vibrant Formica chips and elemental forms make

up this body of work. I had the pleasure of teaching Foundation

Studies at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design this year and had the

joy of re-discovering the basic principles of visual communication

alongside my students. We mixed colored film together with multiple

slide projectors to create pure white light.  We took gorgeous tubes

of primary gouaches and mixed to create deep black. Black and white.

This intrigues me. Light and its shadow are inexorably linked. White

and black are all the vibrant colors of the spectrum, expanded and

contracted. I dreamed of a pure white exhibition, but shadow and then

a pop of red-orange crept in.

The pure white is “Keraflex” a paper-thin porcelain material, made by

a German industrial manufacturer and recently introduced to artists.

In its “green” state it can be easily cut, scored, folded and fused.

When fired it becomes gorgeous translucent porcelain that traps light

in its layers. I was studying folk art, making paper models and pop-up

books with my students and this quietly drifted over into my studio

practice. I spent a year not thinking of jewelry, but experimenting

with this porcelain paper to learn its strengths, possibilities and

most importantly to transcend its 2-D nature and pop it into 3-D.