Collection: Marilyn Andrews

Marilyn and her husband Andrew Van Assche (also a clay artist) walked through the doors of Salmon Falls Gallery in 2015 wanting to show in their local gallery. I was delighted, having been a fan for quite some time, particularly of Marilyn's work. Since that time a series of surprising and unique salt & pepper sets, wall relief pieces and sculpture have found a home here at the gallery and gone home with some of our customers. Sadly in 2019 Marilyn died. Salmon Falls Gallery will continue to show her art as long as it works for Andrew and his family. Below are some quotes from Marilyn about her art:

"I’m self taught as a potter, and have been hand building stoneware pieces to sell since 1976. I work by myself. I have no apprentices or employees. My focus as I work is to create an object which embodies an image that can be a useful tool for understanding."

"I like working with a material that undergoes such radical changes, and working in three dimensions helps me integrate the sensuous and the intellectual. I often use functional objects as forms for images because they assert the scale of ordinary life. This is where I believe we need art to function."

From her artist's statement for the 2017 exhibit "The Figure Speaks"
"The figure is us. In the most minimal marks we see the shape of our world – dark ground, light sky – and ourselves in it – circle of face, upright body.  “Standing” means us and the things we build.
 
"When I strip away clothing and hair, with their signals about gender and class, I have a powerful basic symbol to work with. When I depict figures as I see them around me, I get the same symbolic power with the weight of culture added. When I create an imagined figure I have a symbol of the Self removed to a perspective that moment-to-moment living can’t access.
 
"It’s the power of the symbol that fuels my play with it. Such a rich resource – the smallest gesture of the body or face is full of meaning for us. This is the material I use to make a new connection between myself (physically, emotionally and intellectually) and the physical and social world around me. This is my understanding of art-making and the capability it offers us for understanding our world and communicating with each other.”