Inspired by the splendor of nature, Zemer Peled’s exuberant ceramic art also sends cautionary alerts. In one jubilant piece, a flurry of blue-and-white petals mounds and evolves into majestic blooms, their pointed tips at times poking the artist who made them. From tabletop to towering scale, dynamic forms may twist and seem to shout. Others pop from the wall. All are composed of dozens to thousands of tinted, painted and marbleized handmade pieces—some as spiky as thorns.

Raised on a kibbutz in northern Israel’s Jezreel Valley, Peled understands duality. “When you see a beautiful view where I grew up, you know the danger in the place; you know also the fear. It’s always coming together,” she observes. “I’m trying to put that into my work—to show something that’s aesthetically very beautiful, but at the same time when you touch it, it’s sharp and can cut you. That dissonance is what I’m trying to capture.”

The international artist traveled a circuitous route before settling into her Baltimore studio. She developed her signature style at London’s Royal College of Art, earning a master’s degree in ceramics in 2012. Two artist residencies in the U.S. followed—at the prestigious Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana, and at Cal State Long Beach.

Peled moved to Baltimore in 2018, encouraged by her brother, Amit Peled, a cellist and professor at the Peabody Institute. “It took him 15 years to convince me,” says the artist, seated beside a bank of windows in her Crown Industrial Park studio. Along one wall, hundreds of porcelain pieces in drawers are sorted by color and shape. The sculptor refers to these fragments as shards, reflecting her experiences in Israel.

“When I was a kid,” she begins, “the palace of King Ahab was next to our kibbutz.” She remembers archaeologists digging in that ancient, 9th-century BCE site. Then, while studying ceramics as an undergrad at Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, she helped unearth shards and pottery on an archeological site in the Old City. “Clay, in general, lasts forever; it’s a message from the past that stays,” says Peled. “I often think about how my pieces will look in thousands of years.”

When contemplating a new work, the sculptor seldom starts with sketches or a plan. Instead, she determines its size and color palette, then begins making the shards she’ll need. It’s a lengthy process that can take up to a year, depending on the scale of the piece. She may start by pressing porcelain clay through an ordinary dough extruder or rolling it out into sheets. Forms are cut using a knife or common cookie cutters, then shaped or pinched. After fragments are fired in the studio’s electric kiln, Peled may take a hammer and cautiously smash the brittle lengths into smaller, jagged pieces.

Inserting shards into moist clay structures happens quickly as she circles a piece, viewing it from all directions. “I’m always thinking about something growing, something moving,” the artist comments. Since work begins without a plan, she describes this part of her process as “very intense, very complex, and in the same way, very intuitive for me.” A completed work is fired one last time.

Over the years, Peled’s sculptures have been acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. Commissions have taken her from the Maldives’ Joali Hotel to a private club in Manhattan, and to collectors’ homes in Hawaii, Paris and Berlin.

The artist seldom seeks assistance, with one notable exception. In 2022, while nine months pregnant with her second child, she installed a mammoth wall piece as part of a contemporary clay exhibition at Towson University. In a departure from earlier work, the shards were made of terracotta clay. Extruded and shaped into rugged S-curves, each shard in Fragile Limits hooked onto another, forming the nine-foot-square structure. Its interlocking chains cast willowy shadows against the gallery’s white walls.

Back in the studio, Peled unveils her newest piece, still underway. Refined porcelain shards wrap and project from the four-foot-tall piece’s earthy, terracotta base. The work represents an homage to the sculptor’s creative mother and her garden. Peled remembers the clay totem her mother built there, and the many crafts her mother taught her—among them working with clay, knitting, stitching and carpentry. “The one thing she didn’t teach me was sewing with a machine,” says the enthusiastic student, who has remedied that oversight with classes at Glory Bee’s Sewing Center in Fallston, Maryland.

Eager to take on fresh challenges, the artist lists a few of her plans. “I want to build taller pieces again,” she says, having spent the last few years on smaller ones. And she confidently anticipates incorporating her sewing skills with ceramics. How exactly will she do that? “Come back in a few months and find out,” Peled responds with a knowing grin.

For more information, see zemerpeled.com. Zemer Peled will discuss her work on February 27 (online only) and demonstrate her technique on March 2 at VisArts in Rockville, through the James Renwick Alliance for Craft. To register, visit jracraft.org/jracraftevents/zemer-peled.