| Artist's Statement |
I create in clay because I enjoy the medium. I am comfortable with its
flexibility, its feel and its forgiveness. I like the challenge of stretching
the identity of clay as a contemporary three-dimensional material
while preserving parts of its rich historical tradition.
Form is foremost in my work. Each newly constructed shape has a
personality of its own. I like to make several forms at a time, live with
them, and allow the shapes to direct and lead a piece or an entire
body of work. Some forms become animated and take on figurative
references while others remain purely formal and concerned with
striking a resonance between shape, surface, space and environment.
Whether figurative or formal, visual alliances often occur between
individual pieces, demanding that they be grouped together.
A strong surface vocabulary is also important to my work. I consider
the "skin" of each piece from inception, consciously adjusting the
finishes as the work is constructed. Layered glazes and multiple firings
help create depth of color and textured surfaces. Graphite, ink, paint
and color pencil are often added after the work is fired.
The work is constructed using a combination of techniques that often
starts by pressing slabs of clay into molds. These molds range from
plaster casts made from interestingly shaped everyday objects to
kitchen utensils to wooden molds once used to make parts for nuclear
submarines. These mold-made forms are hand-altered - twisted,
carved, cut apart and reassembled - releasing the shapes from the
constraints of the original molds. After creating numerous and varied
volumetric forms, a playful exploratory process of sorting, adding,
shifting and deleting of individual elements takes place. A single piece
may consist of a dozen parts and change shape many times before
a successful visual relationship takes place.
2008 |
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