In early 2024, Jocelyn Armstrong began The Divine Ones, a series of figurative ceramic sculptures that tilt their mirrored faces skyward, drinking in the cosmos. The series emerged from meditations on the vastness of the universe, the ancestral intelligence carried through generations of women, and the enduring power of the divine feminine.

The first work in the series, Oracle, invokes the figure of the seer as both vessel and intermediary—an agent of divine communication. Her mirrored visage and cyborg inflection suggest a synthesis of the organic and the technological, acknowledging the uncertain convergences of nature, science, and spirit that shape humanity’s future. Subsequent figures—Oculus, the all-seeing eye of the universe; and Portal, a liminal being who gestures toward other realms—extend the narrative into a speculative cosmology of feminine power.

Armstrong’s feminist consciousness was forged in the 1970s, and her practice remains animated by the era’s radical insistence on autonomy and equality. In the wake of renewed erosions of women’s rights in the United States, The Divine Ones envisions an alternative space: a mythic, female-centered society of the future. This imagined matriarchy is at once sanctuary and statement—a place of safety, reclamation, and guarded power.

While researching these ideas, Armstrong revisited the feminist spirituality and Goddess movements of the 1960s and ’70s—forms of neo-paganism that located divinity within women and the natural world. This lineage resonates through the series, as her pantheon expands to include Ishtar (The Great Goddess), The Priestess, The Maiden and The Crone, to complete the series. These figures are not mere representations of myth but contemporary embodiments of its enduring relevance—part oracle, part avatar, part hope for a civil future ruled by women..

Subtle gleams of gold and platinum course through the sculptures—accents of gold leaf and luster glinting like cosmic residue. These metals, sacred across cultures, hold symbolic weight: gold as a conduit of transformation and enlightenment; platinum as an emblem of purity, endurance, and rare strength. The inner cavities shimmer like constellations—repositories of the sacred feminine refracted through celestial metaphor.

Armstrong’s surfaces defy convention. Eschewing glaze, she employs soft pastels on vitrified porcelain—a “cold surface treatment” in ceramics parlance. This technique yields atmospheric hues reminiscent of sky and ether, merging the immediacy of drawing with the permanence of fired clay. The result is a skin both fragile and resilient, one that holds the tension between earthly matter and divine aspiration.