Ask ceramicist Jennifer McCurdy what language she speaks best and she will say the language of porcelain.

“I have a hard time with words,” she said. “They’re like wild birds. I can’t cage them.”

But when she introduced her latest exhibition at Louisa Gould Gallery, she opted to articulate her artistic process with an original poem.

“Satisfaction is a pot on the wheel, well-thrown,” the poem reads. “I center myself first, and then the porcelain / Staying centered is necessary.”

Artist has spent her creative lifetime immersed in clay. — Jeanna Shepard

The Vineyard sculptor’s 40 years of staying centered have taken her intricate white porcelain sculptures to the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery and the Museum of Fine Art.

Her new exhibition at the Louisa Gould Gallery, Sea Forms, features porcelain sculptures in white, palladium and gold that are both rooted in nature and otherworldly. They resemble cyclones, brush fires and coral reefs, sometimes all at once. Ms. McCurdy uses negative space — “the space between” — to create the impression of motion.

“The space between gives the piece breath, the sense that it has life to it,” she said.

Her pieces are resilient, delicate but structurally sound, having survived temperatures hotter than the surface of Venus. After 40 years, she knows what will hold in a kiln and what won’t.

Gilded Sunrise Vessel is a vase constructed of broad, leafy appendages that climb upwards and outwards, separating entirely as they travel from the vessel’s base. The tips of the “leaves” curl under as if they are burning.

On display are porcelain sculptures in white, palladium and gold. — Jeanna Shepard

So the piece wouldn’t collapse in the kiln, Ms. McCurdy fired it upside down and let the hot, pliable porcelain drip over a series of posts.

“That’s a form I’ve been working on for quite some time,” she said. “It’s evolved.”

She said the collection is “anchored” by Contour Jar, a terracotta clay vessel that undulates like a thick, coal-colored python. It’s the only dark-hued piece in the collection. She decided to include it precisely because it’s unique, but also because it embodies the “sea forms” theme of her exhibition.

“That’s a completely different animal... [but] you can see its relations,” she said, standing over Contour Jar’s foot-and-a-half tall frame.

She said that choosing a “favorite” piece would be a betrayal.

“That would be like asking me to choose between my children,” she said.

Clay is how Ms. McCurdy expresses herself, but she also makes the distinction between clay as self-expression and clay as an emotional outlet. She says her own emotions are far from the point of what she creates.

“The connection is between the viewer and the piece of art,” she said. “Honestly, the artist is out of the picture.”

If anything, working the clay means settling the emotions that don’t serve her. Her self-confessed hot temper requires that she center herself before beginning at the wheel.

“I can’t work if I’m angry,” she said. “I don’t. I won’t. That’s part of controlling myself.”

She said approaching the physically and technically exacting work of sculpture requires great discipline. Each day, she wakes up at dawn and rides her bike 20 miles. When she returns home at 10 a.m. she goes to work in the studio, not stopping until 6:00 p.m.

“If I don’t find a flow, I’ll pace in my studio, but what I don’t do is walk away,” she said.

Ms. McCurdy said her relationship to clay is a marriage, requiring constant tending and enduring commitment.

“I could live three lifetimes and not even scratch the surface of what there is to learn in clay,” she said. “It never stops. I’m going to be a potter until I die. This is my life arc.”