When discussing her distinctive vessel forms, Zynsky explains: “I have inside, outside, back of the inside, and the other side. You can never see the whole piece at once, and I like that. There’s always something mysterious, no matter what angle or in what light you’re looking at the piece. It forces you to move around it.” Early in her career, Zynsky asked herself why she was drawn to working with the vessel. During a trip to West Africa in 1984, initiated by a grant that she had received to record traditional Ghanaian music, Zynsky rediscovered the value of the vessel as a practical container for food and liquids, but also as a metaphorical container for fantasies and dreams. The experience of living and working in Africa, which lasted six months, had a significant impact on her work for many years afterward. “When I went to the market in Africa, everything was sold in bulk,” Zynsky says. “I wanted to buy palm oil, but I didn’t have a container to take it home in. I realized how important, historically, the ability to form vessels has been to the development of mankind. A vessel is about containing things, and it’s probably the earliest object that people made besides tools. I love the metaphor of it, too. Now, we have the luxury of them not having to contain anything.”