"The relationship between Adebunmi Gbadebo and her material, clay, is one of supplication-on the part of Gbadebo. The churched among us consider a potter something of an autocrat; they find masochistic affinity with the idea of clay as the humble, dumb stuff of life of which they are made. But clay will give its protest. In certain environmental situations, clay will choose catastrophe."
"Gbadebo hand-digs the soil, filling vats and vats, a total of about eight hundred pounds, which she takes back to her studio, where she sifts out detritus, adds water and secondary clays, then churns it into viable clay. She then shapes the clay into vessels of varying ovoid containers, squat forms around eighteen inches in diameter that might look like baskets, the pelvis, and/or planted seeds at the cataclysmic moment of rupture."
Adebunmi Gbadebo sources rust-red soil from True Blue Cemetery, hand-digging about eight hundred pounds to process into clay. She sifts out detritus, adds water and secondary clays, and churns the mixture into workable material. She shapes the clay into ovoid, squat vessels around eighteen inches in diameter that suggest baskets, pelvic forms, or seeds poised at rupture. She fires the pieces twice, sometimes using a raku-derived sequence with an initial firing near eighteen-hundred degrees followed by a reduction at around a thousand degrees. Gbadebo seeks a half-animated, petrified willfulness in the work so the material registers its own protest and history.
Read at The New Yorker
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