Creativity and a willingness to experiment with new art forms have been a constant theme throughout Jean Gaul’s life, in her artistic pursuits as well as her career choices.
Having mastered drawing, painting and textile art, Gaul’s current artistic undertaking is ceramic sculpture. A member of Indian River Clay, her work is represented at Artists Guild Gallery and one of her pieces was selected for the 100% Pure Florida show at the Fifth Avenue Gallery in Melbourne. The juried show, featuring artists selected from around the state, runs through March 26.
Gaul recalls taking drawing lessons in elementary school, and discovered that not only did she like it, but she was also good at it. Encouraged by her parents and teachers, she built a portfolio with the intent to major in art.
“My parents never disapproved or said, ‘you might have to earn a living,’” says Gaul, who went on to receive a BFA in drawing and painting from Syracuse University.
“Great, right? Till you get out of school, and you have to get a job. And the Medicis are dead, and no one is hiring for that particular specialty,” says Gaul with a laugh.
After a couple of years teaching elementary school art, she took a few years off to raise her young children before getting back into the job market.
“The only thing available was window dressing at the local J.C. Penney, for like 10 hours a week,” Gaul recalls. “I really liked it. It was fun and there was no pressure, let’s face it.”
A district manager took notice of her creative style and hired her for a full-time job remodeling the floor designs of stores in older locations from New Hampshire to Maryland.
“They were trying to attract a new customer base and modernize, and they had all these new products,” says Gaul. “I worked at that job for seven years and I loved it. It was a great experience. There were a lot of small towns that you would never go to otherwise. And it was challenging too, because they were all different shaped stores and you had to problem-solve to get the merchandise shown.”
At a subsequent job in marketing and advertising, she picked up some graphic design experience and, though her own art had taken a “big back seat” to her work, those skills would soon resurface in another creative fashion.
At age 50 she went back to Syracuse University and obtained a master’s degree in textile design, with the intention of creating high-end silk designs for items such as women scarves and men ties.
“But then the workforce went casual, and there really wasn’t much of a call for that sort of patterning,” says Gaul.
She next became a pattern artist in Pennsylvania for a manufacturer of polypropylene ribbon, “the kind you get at the department store for free when they wrap your presents,” and learned about the manufacturing end of the business.
“We had a CEO that was very involved and really supportive of the arts, so we would go to trade shows in Europe. It was a fantastic job.”
That company purchased a high-end ribbon company in New Jersey that began importing ribbons from overseas.
“It was all fabric-based and since that was my real love, I went to New Jersey, and I started to travel to mainly Hong Kong and Taiwan, sometimes China, a few times India,” says Gaul. “It was a whole new cultural awakening. They had a completely different sense of taste and level of color.”
The next chapter in her life began when she retired about 11 years ago and purchased a house in Sag Harbor, N.Y.
“I’m all set to retire. It’s September, I’ve got my stuff all moved into this little house that is a fixer upper. I’m all excited. I’m there two weeks and we have Hurricane Sandy,” Gaul recalls.
“And the town is flooded; it was like the end of the earth for the entire winter. People just deserted the town, there was no power. It was just a really strange winter. And I thought, I’ve landed on the moon.”
Not wanting to spend another winter there, she traveled a couple of years and about eight years ago found Vero Beach, which is now her main home.
“I think I now go back north two and a half months and the rest is here,” says Gaul, who threw herself into Vero’s art scene.
Being “a little tired of flat surfaces,” she took a ceramic class from artist Ginny Piech Street, which opened up a whole new world.
“I love working with the clay and forming surfaces and then painting on the surface,” says Gaul. “I like to form the clay and fire it and then look at the clay as a 3-dimensional canvas, or like a bas-relief sometimes. So, it sort of blends two things together.”
She appreciates the pliability of clay, but says, “I feel you never have complete control over it; it has a mind of its own. It only cooperates so much. But that’s what I like about it. They become very organic and natural looking. I get a lot of inspiration from nature.”’
The piece accepted by the 100% Pure Florida show is another nature-based, organic sculpture called Flora, made from speckled clay, with a soft pinkish glaze, a green underglaze and yellow in the center.
“It’s a flower. I like it because it looks like a floating shape. I think it looks like leaves in the wind, so rather than heavily paint on this, I did simple painting. I think the shape is really the focus.”
In addition to experimenting with clay types, Gaul has investigated a variety of glazes and effects. She initially tried dipping glazes, explaining, “It covers the surface, and it fires into a glass-like exterior. And by combining different glazes, it creates chemistry, and forms new colors or new effects.”
But, missing her 2-dimensional artistry, she now paints using an underglaze.
“You can blend it and you can get detail with it without it blending together like the dipping glazes.”
Her work is hand-built and sculptured rather than functional, and the paint design is often determined by the sculptural shape, explaining: “The imagery speaks to me, inspires me.”
Gaul has done a few series, including a fish series, where the fish were made as puzzle pieces, and mounted on driftwood. Another series was of masks, including a COVID mask, a couple of garden gods and an Egyptian lynx.
“They were mostly emotional takes on things. Or as my children like to call them, creepy,” Gaul says with a chuckle.
The experimentation in mediums extends to her 2-dimensional pieces as well.
“I probably will go back to doing pastels,” said Gaul. Pointing to a painting of Koi that compliments ceramic fish mounted nearby, she says: “This is really transparent ink. They’re very beautiful, bold colors.”
She draws inspiration from ceramic artists Alberto Bustos and Kim Simonsson.
“Alberto Bustos is doing these shapes that almost look alive. They’re just incredibly beautiful.
I’m so fascinated with movement, making clay look like it’s moving, and he does a wonderful job of that,” says Gaul.
And Simonsson’s fantasy figures are finished with a specialized glaze that give the appearance of flock. “He has managed to make the hard surface of clay look soft, almost like velvet.
They’re just beautiful. The idea that he’s developed this, I just find fascinating.
“I’m going to keep at ceramics because I really love it. I want to keep experimenting with the shapes and to push hand building as far as I can push it,” says Gaul.
Photos by Kaila Jones
