Simone Bodmer-Turner and Emma Kohlmann's Beautiful Friendship

The work of artists like Simone Bodmer-Turner makes clear the impact of digital media on even the most historical of mediums. Even when the output remains staunchly traditional in form (in her case, ceramics, which date back to 24,000 BCE), the means by which the work is produced (in limited runs), sold (largely digitally), and marketed (with every source of inspiration plainly laid out before the viewer) were uncommon if not nonexistent less than a decade ago, at least in the world of fine art.

Her Permanent Collection embodies this shift. The first run of the ceramic vases, curvilinear in pristine white or black and inspired by Meso-American vessels, was introduced in 2018, and with each edition, new designs have been added as existing pieces enter a cycle of reproduction. Last year, though, Bodmer-Turner enlisted a collaborator: her friend, the Massachusetts-based artist Emma Kohlmann, who layered on whimsical and mythical paintings in vibrant color, adding her distinctive imprint.

The partnership is an enchanting fit. The amorphous quality of Kohlmann’s work—organic, flowing, otherworldly—lends itself to the bulbous and rounded nature of the vessels, particularly those that combine the Meso-American precedents with other sources of inspiration: Noguchi-inspired Japanese lanterns, or stemware in the spirit of the multihyphenate Valentine Schlegel. Kohlmann's figures, human and not, coupled with botanical patterns and often more mysterious textures, are at home in this ancient context, a symmetry that succeeds in accentuating each artist's contribution. Kohlmann and Bodmer-Turner are a natural pairing, and the work suggests their influences are as well.

The partnership was a byproduct of lockdown, during which Kohlmann and Bodmer-Turner met in the latter's studio for a week, simply "messing around, trying different things, looking through books together, and finding direction," the sculptor says. They are vocal about these layers of inspiration, spelling them out in plain language on Bodmer-Turner's site: in one example, a Peruvian terracotta Bridge Handled Jug with Bird Whistle (1,000 CE) and an entry in Illustrated Dictionary of Pottery Form by Robert Fournier (1981), with Masterworks, by Karl Blossfeldt (1928), and Naxos, a flowering form in colored crayon by Cy Twombly (1982), added by Kohlmann afterwards.

Following their creative session, Kohlmann drove the newly fired pieces back to Western Massachusetts, applied her touch over several months, and then drove them back to New York for glazing and another firing. The project was an inviting respite not just from the solitary nature of the period, but from the solitary nature of an artist's life—"a nice kind of back and forth into other spaces," says Bodmer-Turner.

Kohlmann's second contribution to the sold-out collaboration—one Bodmer-Turner plans to incorporate into all future collaborations—involves South Bronx Mutual Aid, which provides support and assistance to families impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and will receive twenty-five percent of the proceeds from the collection. Such an initiative is routine for Kohlmann, a Bronx native who has donated proceeds to organizations ranging from the Western Massachusetts Asylum Support Network to the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network and Literacy for Incarcerated Teens.

"She's always been someone I've talked to when I want to do a fundraiser or incorporate more social and community engagement into the sales of the work that we make at the studio," says Bodmer-Turner. Community support, she explains, is essentially an intrinsic component of Kohlmann's creative output, and from her, Bodmer-Turner has learned "how to do it well, do it right, and honor the communities we are trying to help." Even as future collections expand to different collaborators, the charitable component will remain consistent, another mark from another artist in a thread dating back tens of thousands of years.

For more information, please visit SimoneBodmerTurner.com. Bodmer-Turner's first solo exhibition, "Take Part In," is on view through Friday at Matter Projects, New York. Read this story and many more in print by ordering our third issue here.