By MiChelle Jones • FOR THE TENNESSEAN • AUGUST 29, 2010

Debra Fritts, an Atlanta-based sculptor with Nashville roots, travels around the country teaching adult students how to incorporate storytelling into their work. Her workshop is called So Much More Than the Figure, which is also an apt description of her own work.

Nine of Fritts' sculptures spanning the past two years are on view through Sept. 18 at Gallery One, part of Earth, Water, Fire, a two-person show with painter Thomas Monaghan.

Monaghan paints dark, dreamy landscapes of the coming together of water, land and light.

Physical, spiritual presence

Fritts creates spiritual triggers of reflection; her sculptures have a strong physical presence, yet they also seem to capture the moment of transitioning into another realm.

In this and in other, hard-to-pinpoint ways, her work bears a slight resemblance - or feel, really - to that of local sculptor Johan Hagaman.

"We swim in the same stream," Hagaman says. "Our visual language has a similar vocabulary; we're both storytellers." The two artists are longtime friends; in fact, Hagaman hosted Fritts and her husband this past weekend when the two were in town for Fritts' opening at Gallery One.

"It's the poetry of the sculpture. I think both of us do that," Fritts says of their artistic kinship.

While both women say Hagaman is more metaphorical, drawing inspiration from Southern literature in particular, Fritts is influenced more by events in her personal life or in the world around her.

Her "I Thirst" series, for example, came about during the Atlanta drought a couple of years ago. Fritts created six pieces in which a female form interacts with a vessel either containing or leaking water. Sometimes the woman is submerged in the vessel, as in Rainmaker - Late Summer; in Rainkeeper - Spring, one arm of the woman disappears into a container of water resting on her hip.

Texture and color

Female forms are a constant in Fritts' work, as are rough and textured surfaces, with lots of scoring and other marks and heaps of clay piled on in places. The mark making, as well as her distinctive use of color, are hangovers from her background in drawing and painting.

"Of course, wet clay is just screaming for you to slash through it or do something," she says. "It's just a real intuitive thing to draw lines or to take a found object impression."

Gallery One's Shelley McBurney says Fritts approaches her sculpture like a painter. "She uses a lot of colorants and glazes, and she fires the work multiple times in the kiln, which I think distinguishes her work from a lot of other artists working in ceramics."

Fritts is also concerned with creating structurally sound sculptures; form, along with surface, is one of the two problems she tells students they must address in their work. For her, structure (form) and surface go hand in hand. Or as she puts it, "a great form and a crummy surface doesn't work."

Her attention to form and surface is especially noticeable in Three Women Praying, in which a trio of women stand back to back, creating a tight wedge. Armless, with heads bowed and eyes closed, they evoke a shared experience and strong bond.

According to McBurney, this piece reflects the connection Fritts develops with her students as they share their stories and she gives feedback on their work.

Lately Fritts has been getting some feedback on her own work, but from Mother Nature rather than her students. Fritts and her husband recently purchased a casita in Abiquiu, N.M. The surrounding landscape influenced a bust titled White Rock, but so far the climate has had a larger effect on the way Fritts works.

She generally works on up to five pieces at a time in her Atlanta studio; in the drier air of New Mexico, she has to concentrate on just two pieces at a time.

Meanwhile, she's curious about the other ways spending time in New Mexico will influence her work and is already anticipating a Gallery One exhibition devoted solely to work created in Abiquiu.