Linda Fitz Gibbon (b. 1958) creates ceramic sculptures and installations that explore motherhood, beauty, nature and life’s creative and destructive forces. After a residency at Anderson Ranch and her children leaving home, Fitz Gibbon committed more fully to her studio practice, earning her M.F.A. from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University in 2013. Influenced by ceramic artist Richard Shaw’s assemblage-based approach, she often combines disparate forms into unexpected wholes. Fitz Gibbon’s hand-built earthenware ranges from highly representational objects recalling toys, fine china and produce to abstract forms that are cracked, contorted, elongated or deliberately crushed and run over. This embrace of accident and destruction complicates ceramics’ associations with preciousness, craft and domesticity. Display is also integral to her work: Objects may be precariously stacked, suspended or positioned in ways that heighten their apparent vulnerability.