Los Angeles–based ceramic artist Maria Loram creates sculptural vessels and lighting pieces that feel both ancient and celestial - objects shaped by hand, but carrying the quiet weight of stone, moon surfaces and weathered earth. Her ceramics sit comfortably in the world of contemporary, textured, handbuilt ceramics, yet they also hold something more elusive: a stillness that invites you to look longer.
Maria’s process merges wheel work, handbuilding, clay layering, and painterly glaze experimentation. Her pieces are minimalist yet emotionally resonant, often appearing like small planets, softened relics or natural formations shaped by tide or time. They feel unearthed rather than manufactured, grounded in clay yet open to the atmosphere around them.
Her practice is deeply informed by Eastern philosophy - wabi-sabi, non-duality, Advaita Vedanta, Zen - where imperfection is not a flaw but an opening. Each vessel becomes a meditation on matter and impermanence: a tactile bridge between the organic and the non-organic, the earthly and the cosmic.
Maria often returns to the poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky, whose questions about purpose and light echo quietly through her work. His insistence that 'if the stars are lit, then someone must need them' mirrors the way her vessels feel like necessary objects - small constellations of earth and fire made to anchor a room, illuminate a corner, or bring quiet focus to a space.
Born in Russia and now based in California, Maria draws from a multidisciplinary background in science, linguistics, yoga and visual art. A turning point in her life opened her capacity to express without fear; from that moment, clay became a way of speaking — a language of touch, texture and transformation.
Her ceramics are contemplative to live with. Up close, each surface reveals subtle atmospheres: cratered glazes, mineral flecks, gentle erosion. From afar, the forms become serene and sculptural, holding a room with understated gravity. These are pieces made not for spectacle, but for presence.
Maria Loram’s work offers a quiet antidote to noise - grounding, elemental, and luminous in its restraint. Sculptures shaped by earth, guided by intuition, and animated by the possibility that even the smallest object can hold a universe.
Maria Loram ceramic sculptures, available at Lara Hutton Concept Gallery & Store