My current body of work exhibited in “New Growth” is focused on organic imagery. This work is constructed from a variety of clay hand building techniques including pinching from single balls of clay, coiling and rolling out from solid clay cylinder forms. Each sculpture is finished with colored and clay tinted terra sibilate, under glazes and various oxides.Multiple firings are used with a final firing to cone 04 oxidation. During the last few years I have been “collecting” plants, pods, leaves, sticks, tree limbs, and many other organic objects that I find in my yard, in parking lots and in hikes in the mountains. At first, I just put these objects in boxes or on the tables of my studio in anticipation of being further inspired. Only recently did these inspirations become sculptural realities. Some ideas cannot be forced– they must settle and incubate slowly. The ideas pushed through this winter and inspired new directions, new forms, “New Growth.” All of the forms in the “New Growth” exhibit are essentially sculptural;however, I consider most of them vessels and am intended to convey volume much like a pot, bowl, or vase can. I am obviously influenced in this regard from local North Carolina potters of which we are all fortunate in this state to witness and support.
Other organic influences come from the cycle that plants go through much like the human condition. “New Growth” is focused on the young life of a plant but the older decaying plant can also be just as beautiful.The new and old and the many stages in between give an artist a lifetime of limitless possibilities.
