I'm one of those people, who, if I are not making something by hand, literally lose my grip on everything everything else that I do.
It's therapy . . but it also opens the way for other projects, such as writing, poetry, and study. Actually 'opens the way' is an understatement. Clay is stabilizing. Healthy. It restores the blood. This is where I am calmest, and most sane. It restores me after poetry, drawing, painting . . . and madness.
This is the ritual of habit. Of repeatability. Of small differences between many things.
My habit is very simple, I go to the studio in the late afternoon or early evening, and sometimes don't return until very late. I put on music, or if it is summertime, I listen to John Sterling narrate Yankees baseball.
Material should be moved higher up the energy chain. It must be evolved. Everything asks the question - what might I become?
I love fragments.
There is no such thing as completion, or perfection. As soon as a piece is finished, or perfect, it begins to move down that slope towards eventual, and total deterioration. And so my sculptures, and pots, represent a giant circus company of half-thought out ideas, some complete with four limbs and a head, some not. They limp or improve their way towards the same eventual fate as you and me.
At some point in the evening work, I begin yoga. The physical work of wedging clay, and heaving kiln shelves around, is tiring, so I make a break. I feel blessed that such a discipline exists. One never knows how deeply one can go in yoga, or what one might discover.
I'm not one of those potters who can sit for hours and crank out hundreds of beautifully thrown identical bowls or cups or plates. I wish I were, because for me the real joy, is painting, glazing and firing what I have made. To me the act of making the form is really just the act of stretching canvas, or preparing paper, so that I can explore color, and the chemistry of the fire. It's time consuming work.
My wood-fired plates are an experiment in forms that start out very much the same, but end up, after the firing, very different from each other.
Most art is an evolution of forms that are intended to become unique or different. But these plates are an experiment in the opposite. How do I make hundreds of things very much the same way, and instead let the fire make them different for me.
Figures and creatures populate a world of my imagination. Perhaps I'm creating friends and furniture to take with me into another life.
My joy with my boxes is what I will find to put inside. Nothing is more boring than an empty box, but when it has character it draws contents to it. I love this process, of my boxes finding little citizens to go live inside them.
We live in a lyrical repeating world of ritual, much of which is performed for it's own sake, with no easily viewed result. We touch, change, view, acknowledge the world around us in concentric circles that grow larger and lead out into the world.
It's therapy . . but it also opens the way for other projects, such as writing, poetry, and study. Actually 'opens the way' is an understatement. Clay is stabilizing. Healthy. It restores the blood. This is where I am calmest, and most sane. It restores me after poetry, drawing, painting . . . and madness.
This is the ritual of habit. Of repeatability. Of small differences between many things.
My habit is very simple, I go to the studio in the late afternoon or early evening, and sometimes don't return until very late. I put on music, or if it is summertime, I listen to John Sterling narrate Yankees baseball.
Material should be moved higher up the energy chain. It must be evolved. Everything asks the question - what might I become?
I love fragments.
There is no such thing as completion, or perfection. As soon as a piece is finished, or perfect, it begins to move down that slope towards eventual, and total deterioration. And so my sculptures, and pots, represent a giant circus company of half-thought out ideas, some complete with four limbs and a head, some not. They limp or improve their way towards the same eventual fate as you and me.
At some point in the evening work, I begin yoga. The physical work of wedging clay, and heaving kiln shelves around, is tiring, so I make a break. I feel blessed that such a discipline exists. One never knows how deeply one can go in yoga, or what one might discover.
I'm not one of those potters who can sit for hours and crank out hundreds of beautifully thrown identical bowls or cups or plates. I wish I were, because for me the real joy, is painting, glazing and firing what I have made. To me the act of making the form is really just the act of stretching canvas, or preparing paper, so that I can explore color, and the chemistry of the fire. It's time consuming work.
My wood-fired plates are an experiment in forms that start out very much the same, but end up, after the firing, very different from each other.
Most art is an evolution of forms that are intended to become unique or different. But these plates are an experiment in the opposite. How do I make hundreds of things very much the same way, and instead let the fire make them different for me.
Figures and creatures populate a world of my imagination. Perhaps I'm creating friends and furniture to take with me into another life.
My joy with my boxes is what I will find to put inside. Nothing is more boring than an empty box, but when it has character it draws contents to it. I love this process, of my boxes finding little citizens to go live inside them.
We live in a lyrical repeating world of ritual, much of which is performed for it's own sake, with no easily viewed result. We touch, change, view, acknowledge the world around us in concentric circles that grow larger and lead out into the world.
