Gardens of Ceramic Delights Art Exhibition

Walter O’Neill has long been inspired by nature and has spent much of his artistic practice seeking the sublime through abstract painting. When he moved from New York to South Florida a decade ago, he decided to re-charge his artistic practice by exploring a different medium while following his interest in interpreting nature.

In Florida, he is inspired by the sea and the fecundity of the sub-tropical environment, its endless diversity of exotic shapes and colors, its dense growth, old growth, regrowth, and entanglement of vegetation, both indigenous and invasive. Using simple techniques of hand modeling clay he creates dense, strange, and wondrous self-contained worlds. Clay is one of the earliest materials human used to create forms and model. Almost every culture and religion throughout the world tells a story of the creator or god forming humans from clay. The human body is inexplicitly linked to the earth. Walter’s abstract sculptures suggest this link by intermingling aspects of landscape and sea-life with forms that seem related to body organs. Despite the unrelenting suburban and urban attempt to subjugate nature the artist hopes to show that “in the end nature always wins.”

Throughout his career Walter has juggled his studio art practice with day-jobs teaching, and managing alternative and community-based art programs. In this exhibit he is taking the opportunity to integrate his parallel pursuits as artist and educator by offering visitors to participate. A few sculptures on exhibit will be unfinished so that visitors can form something in clay and add it to the sculpture. At a later date the sculpture will be fired and glazed.

Learn more about Walter here.

Made possible with support from the Broward County Cultural Division.