I don't feature ceramic work on Extreme Craft very often. Why, you may ask? I am a ceramic artist, love and collect ceramic art, but rarely find "extreme" work that manages to reference the medium while pushing into the future. 
Imagine my surprise and delight when I got an email from Baroness von Carrie Reichardt, a London artist who pushes ceramic art to its logical extremes.
Baroness von Reichardt's ongoing masterwork is The Treatment Rooms (MySpace Link), a house in West London that is gradually being transformed with ceramic mosaics. Imagine encountering a psychedelic outpost among the sprawling gray urban city sprawl. The mosaics on the house include an all-seeing Mickey Mouse, copious mushrooms, flying eyeballs, and an enchanted tiki head.
Most importantly, however, is a memorial wall dedicated to the Baroness' dear friend Luis Ramirez, who was an inmate on death row in Texas. Ramirez was executed in October, 2005. A new documentary, Tales from the Treatment Rooms, documents their friendship, which began as pen pals, and culminated in a visit by Reichardt to Huntsville, which is chronicled in the documentary. Last year, members of Ramirez' family visited London to attend the unveiling of the memorial wall at the Treatment Rooms.
For Baroness von Reichardt, life and art are intertwined. The Treatment Rooms is an important public art project that proves that ceramics, an incredibly commercialized medium, can make a vital noncommercial--even political statement. The Treatment rooms are an attempt by Reichardt and her partner, Mr. Spunky, to reconcile their sanity with an increasingly unbalanced world. How are you leaving your mark on those who come in contact with you?
