Most of us know figurines as ornamental trinkets. They’re diminutive, breakable, and invariably sentimental. Modern-day iterations are often angels and fairies, rosy-cheeked children and big-skirted princesses.

I’ve never been a figurine collector, but I’ve been thinking about them a lot since viewing Gerit Grimm’s ceramic sculptures at the Museum of Wisconsin Art.

Grimm, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is a meticulous and accomplished ceramicist. Her work reflects an accumulation of influences and interests that date back to her childhood in the former German Democratic Republic, her years as a production potter, and her early fascination with the California Funk ceramic movement. She is a voracious consumer of art history and a determined boundary-pusher at the potter’s wheel.

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