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Intense Feelings

BOTH SIDES NOW: SHARIF FARRAG’S STYLED OUT CERAMICS

Sharif Farrag, the 28-year-old ceramicist and painter, is only one man, and he finds many ways to be himself. “There are immediate acts that are really fun for me,” he says, “The ideal days are when I can just draw, throw something on the wheel.” Then there are the other days: the days when a past version of himself left an intricate assignment on a delicate, still-drying work in progress that must be completed by a self-imposed deadline. On those days, he feels himself existing between the two different versions of being an artist: the Farrag who is the boss of a studio, and the Farrag who is that studio’s assistant, the worker who molds an idea into its tactile form. “Those are the days when I’m like, ok, my boss Sharif needs me to paint every vine green by Thursday,” he describes. “And I’m like, shit! I don’t want to work with this boss.”

Besides the constant back and forth between having the vision and doing the labor, there is also the Farrag who is the teacher of young artists, and the Farrag who is currently working towards his Masters at UCLA, using the university’s kilns and communing with many different kinds of artists while he studies ceramics. There is the Farrag who still knows how important it is to be like the kid he was, born, raised, and still in love with Los Angeles—to retain that sense of losing the rest of the world in the singular pursuit of the right now, not to work eighteen hours a day when there’s a dozen beaches around any corner and an entire city to still explore—and then there is the Farrag who is the very responsible parent to his new dog, a chihuahua named Miss Sprinkles, his companion on morning walks and new muse in many of his works. “The characters I’ve been doing, I’ll add her ears,” he explains. “Once you add the ears, it just kind of ends up looking like Sprinkles.”

The vases seen here are part of an evolving collection in Farrag’s own practice—vessels whose contents are molded into the exterior, a collaged conversation between the artist and his completed work (“I tend to ramble,” Farrag mentions, “You can look at my art pieces and see that.”) With references to the cartoons of his youth, like his perennial influence Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, or the Art Nouveau jewelry he sometimes buys off of eBay to get a feel for its weight, or allusions to ancient Egypt, in his immaculately detailed, overlapping designs there is always that suggestion of time travel. Like the music of his youth he listens to in his studio to stay connected to the kid he once was, they are also hints of the present: of the sense of immediacy, of improvisation, of the chaos that he says is his preferred state. “With clay, you’re working against gravity,” he reminds himself—a test of limits with the possibility for infinite futures.

Seen together with photographs shot by Ben Beagent of Tereza Ortiz’s styling, the works are loosely interpreted into outfits—another conversation mediated between artist and art, material and medium, worker and wearer. “Creating context around your work is different than making art,” Farrag believes. “I’m trying to share that joy I feel in my studio outward—I'm looking at these different sides of me and I'm just watching it all.”

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