Donna Green’s practice is rooted in an enduring fascination with how materials behave under pressure—both physically and metaphorically. She treats clay as a living medium, one that resists, slumps, stretches, and records every movement of the hand. Her studio process is a conversation between control and accident, intuition and physics. Gravity, weight, and time shape the work as much as she does, creating forms that feel both deliberate and inevitable.
Though grounded in the tradition of the vessel, Green’s sculptures refuse function, asserting themselves as independent bodies. Their curving, swelling, and collapsing shapes suggest growth and decay, sensuality and entropy. Some forms recall geological or biological processes—mounds of earth, coral, or muscle—while others evoke the intimacy of flesh, particularly the feminine body. This tension between containment and release gives the work its emotional depth.
Throughout her practice, Green demonstrates an abiding respect for ancient craft traditions while pushing against their limits. References to Jōmon pottery, Han dynasty vessels, and Baroque garden grottos reveal her sensitivity to ornament and excess, as well as her interest in how cultures materialize emotion and spirituality through form. In this sense, her work is as much about human history as it is about the body—it carries traces of ritual, labor, and transformation.
For Green, art-making is a form of alchemy: an exchange between the seen and unseen, the physical and the psychological. Whether through fire in the kiln or the oily drag of pigment, her works emerge from process as testaments to endurance and metamorphosis—alive with the energy of their own becoming.
Donna Green in her studio. Watermill, NY
