If you’re always in the mood for discovering new artists who aren’t scared to step on the wild side, Karolina Romanowska is just the person you’re looking for. She’s transforming clay into some of the most bizarre masks that you’ll ever come across, which she describes as “extremely resilient yet fragile”.
Romanowska is a ceramic artist from Wisconsin, whose quirky masks attracted over 100,000 Instagram followers to her Instagram page. She started working with clay because it reminded her of her childhood years of playing in the dirt and letting her imagination run wild, and she couldn’t imagine using any other material in her art.
“Clay moves with the maker. It’s alive and it has a spirit of its own. It’s a constant dance that demands discipline… Once the piece comes out of the bisque fire, I can no longer change its structure. I have to accept it, nurture it, and decorate it one color and texture at a time,” she told Colossal
Romanowska’s ceramic pieces take the shape of anthropomorphic masks, and her main goal is to create pieces that stick with you and really make you think. Pottery artists who specialize in masks aren’t easy to find, but she doesn’t see anything unusual in her decision to put them front and center because masks have been around since the beginning of time, chronicling cultural and historical traditions over the centuries.
