Still Life with Fruit – Heather Ossandon

Inspired by a painting of the same name in the Winterthur collection, Still Life with Fruit is a 3D tableau of ceramics created using wood-firing methods. It highlights Henry Francis du Pont’s animal husbandry, the natural wildlife on the estate, and agriculture specific to the Delaware region. The scene incorporates objects from the Winterthur area, imagery from paintings, and re-creations of various everyday items from the museum collection. As a Maker-Creator Fellow in 2018, Ossandon arrived to study tableware and the Campbell Collection of Soup Tureens at Winterthur and became intrigued by handwritten historical cookbooks and journals and the historic link between art and food—from the Dutch Golden Age paintings to Cezanne’s apples to The Futurists Cookbook. 

Ossandon explains, “I am interested in both the specificity of material, as well as the process in which objects are made. Utilitarian objects inscribe the ritual of the everyday, both in my life and in the lives of others. My work uses functional ceramics as a vehicle in the conversation about art and its social applications.”