Her approach to clay strongly relates to the influences and experiences born of her large expatriate French family, which prompted her creative thoughts at an early age. These thoughts were daily informed by the culture of her surroundings, architectural work of her father, and her engagement with her eight siblings.
Though earthenware is traditionally regarded as a rustic medium associated with Mediterranean craft, Verley coaxes the most graceful of forms from the material on the wheel. Her painterly application of under glaze on the delicate unfired surface exemplifies her extraordinary sense of color, balance, and pattern.
The current series, Totem, explores figurative forms with their distinctive striped garb and widely divergent personalities, as a metaphor for the beauty and strength common to the important women influential in the artist’s life. The stacked collars integral to the structure of these towers allow the totems upward ascension. Each collar delicately supporting the next, creating a contour and color study of deliberately rhythmic stripe, suggesting an elapse of time and measured growth, visually sealing the connected elements of the totemmed warriors.
Verley received her BFA in Ceramics from Syracuse University under the renowned David Macdonald. Additionally, the artist attended the Hornsey College of Art in London and studied textile design at the Rhode Island School of Design. Recently, Verley has shown at the Paul Mellon Arts Centre, Joan Lukas Rothenberg Gallery, Peter Elliot Blue and the Chameleon Gallery in New York.
