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Reprinted in full, minus image.

The Chicest Sticks

Long before the forager-artist Katie Ridley Murphy began sculpting sticks from porcelain, she sketched them from her own Atlanta backyard — and sold the resultant works as original drawings and prints. And each piece, regardless of the medium, was modeled after a real stick she found in nature.

Her mesmerizingly delicate work is inspired by, appropriately, her twin children — when they were 2, Murphy began enlisting their help to pick up the little sticks, which she would study and draw at home as the children swirled around her, playing. It was her calm in the midst of their beautiful storm. Her move from printmaking to the pottery studio took place about a year ago. And most of the sticks she seeks out these days, now that her children are 6, are white ones from nearby Arabia Mountain — where they sit atop the large granite rock face, and are naturally bleached by the sun.

At home, Murphy painstakingly recreates the shape and heft — as well as every nook and cranny — of each specimen, forming the pieces by hand, and adding about 20 percent to their size since they tend to shrink when fired in the kiln. The finer details come next, courtesy of a steady hand and an X-Acto knife — and Murphy’s grandmother’s old sewing needles. Each piece takes anywhere from eight to 28 hours to create; in the above slideshow, she shares her process.

Katie Ridley Murphy’s sculptures, $500-$2,500, are available at tenthousandthingsnyc.com.