Statement of Work – Ceramic Sculpture – Masses
I test matter, and choose the most eloquent of translucent whites. I challenge my strength with the resistance of my materials
– pushing us both to our physical limits. I explore the potentials of clay; and I choreograph the movement of mass
– fire collaborates; but I control and limit its input. These works speak to phenomenology, experience, and context.
I am obsessed with clay: I love the possibilities, the colors, the smell, and the touch – at once so soft that it squishes between my fingers, and so sharp and dense that it could slice them. From particles, to sludge, to balls of clay like mud patties – Ceramic becomes hard in increments of density – fired to barely hard to dense to vitrified to fragments to dust again – a continuing cycle.
I find inspiration in the Landscape – Materials-science, and Geology. I reference and juxtapose air and earth – hoping to imbue these works with a sense of both Compression and Levitation. I consider these works finished at many states in their existence: I continue pushing, and pulling, and challenging them with fire, until I recognize a State that demands to be left. Even then, these masses will change. I have chosen to work with the contrasts of density and fragility – these works will shed; then erode to an end I will be unable to control. They take on the experience of time. I observe these changes; and accept their evolution beyond my final choices.
Objects exist in space. They have a formal relationship to that space, and their impact relies on the context of viewing. Experiencing sculpture is a physical encounter. My physical relationship to the mass triggers thoughts and feelings in response. Relationship, and the thoughts provoked, link directly to our bodies and the scale at which we exist. This relationship of body / object / environment creates the ever-changing dialogue of sculptural experience. When Proximity, Time, Body, Object, and Environment, trigger chains of developing thought; I believe my work is at its best.
Materials, Action, Landscape, Site, Non-site – Wonder at the nature of things – I accumulate a sense of place – the place where the clay and grasses are gathered, the place they are fired, then where returned – a physical space where the relationship of viewer and sculpture exist. These experiences teach me how to better see, and now to better observe – quietly and with great force. This is the power of quiet observation and relationship – it is my realization of a sense of wonder.