Molly Hatch: Amalgam

Molly Hatch is a ceramic artist and designer best known for large-scale wall installations of her hand-painted ceramic plates. For nearly 20 years she has worked to merge the distinctive look of painterly surfaces with the physicality of ceramic forms. Drawing on the history of decorative arts and painting and interrogating the meaning of inherited objects in our lives, Hatch adroitly blends, deconstructs, and defamiliarizes traditional patterns and motifs. Scaling them up until they reach a degree of abstraction, she draws attention to unexpected connections across cultures and eras.

Commissioned as part of Sarasota Art Museum’s Inside Out Program, Hatch’s new site-specific installation, Amalgam (2023), will span two floors, visually linking the Jan Schmidt Loggia and Mark & Irene Kauffman Arcade. Consisting of more than 450 earthenware plates hand-painted in white, blue, and gold luster, Amalgam is conceived as one ensemble framed by the four arched windows. Hatch also plays with the empty spaces, so that viewers perceive lines and patterns between plates adjacent to each other. The whole composition may also be experienced from multiple points of view, from near and far, inside and outside of the Museum.