Sexpots

Coit says of her 1968 Sexpots:

“When I was coming up, Marilyn Monroe was called a sexpot. I was very young, and didn’t know what it meant; I thought it meant a literal pot. Since I was--in my view--very mature when I was at university, I laughed at that, and used that title for a series of pottery. I began by throwing nice, symmetrical pots; then I would cut through them, shape them, add to them.

“Most of them were about vibrancy and sensuality. I used the pots as a ground, as a surface for painting and drawing. This method of surface decoration unites them. The images are interconnected by line and composition: each object depicted, as it approaches the edge, becomes part of the next object. The end of a mushroom stem becomes the beginning of an electric cord.

“There’s a preciousness and a precision, but they’re also very playful. Some of the pots were very sexy, I thought then. In retrospect, I think there’s a sweetness, a naiveté, a hopefulness.”

'“Intimate in scale and delicate in form, the Sexpot vessels unabashedly assert female desire through a feminine form that isn’t afraid of literalizing that sexual charge with an electric plug that commingles with the primitive shapes and textures around it.” - Jennie Hirsh, from “Before and After Language: The Art of Madelin Coit”