“STRETCHING THE LIMITS”.

 

I create abstract sculptural vessel shapes with concern for movement, flow and texture. In these abstract pieces, I wish to capture the moment when material transitions from one state to another. The created object suggests both the process it has gone through and the transformations that could follow; while at the same time it is caught in a snapshot of Zen-like calm.

 

At the beginning of my career, I worked for years on the wheel creating functional pieces. In time, I used the wheel to experiment with freer, non-functional shapes. Seventeen years ago I took my sculptural work off the wheel completely and began abstracting the vessel shape. I arrived at a personal approach of free clay work, which I experience as a bodily dialogue with clay. Rather than the clay revolving on the wheel before me, I constantly revolve around the clay. I beat the clay with fists and hammers, I incise it with wires and spatulas, I stretch it and coerce it into its final shape. In this way I explore the limits of clay. Process is as important to me as aesthetic result.

 

In the last ten years I have been working with unglazed clays, testing the inclusions of porcelain in rough stoneware bodies, as well as playing with different colored clays embedded in the main clay body. I have replaced the effect of glazes or alternative firing methods with the design and contrast created by these inclusions.

 

(2019)