Fischer, Mary

The focus of my work is architecture. I look at buildings in the wild and in books. They get jumbled in my head and sorted out by my hands. The buildings started as boxes. Lids became roofs. Feet and chimneys appeared and things go on from there, changing from season to season.

There are no special techniques or attempts to disguise how pieces are put together. Surface treatments and forms change over time as different things capture my interest. The timelessness of indigenous, especially desert, architecture is an abiding influence, as is the use of concrete by contemporary architects.

The making of houses is largely intuitive, but in order to get the “right” proportions, I sometimes make paper models. It is easier and quicker to make a piece out of paper and then use the model as a pattern to cut pieces out of clay. Building with extruded pieces is like playing with Legos. The more pieces you have to play with, the more you can move things around until the right combination appears. Some works include multiple pieces that are not attached so that playing can continue, arranging and rearranging as fancy dictates.

Long House Tall House