Artist Statement

My position, as mediator between material and environment, rests somewhere between amateur geologist and curious observer.  Drawing from experiences in the environment seeing exposed earth and geologic phenomenon, my vessels create relationships between human and nonhuman realms.  The existence of clay as a cultural and geologic material drives my investigations.  Stressed surfaces, thick slashes, jagged edges, ripped and torn segments of a vessel act as abstracted conduits to earths base features while not obliterating inherent containment and presentation properties.  Creating vessels in hard and soft material states and aggressively manipulating form and surface allows me to compress the distance between interior and exterior.  Interior becomes responsive and evident to exterior, negating binary divisions and emphasizing reactive relationships. Re-fired and sandblasted surfaces of a pot point to an active position of material exposed to dynamic additive and subtractive flows of information unbound by linear firing cycles akin to deposition and erosion of material constantly shifting our immediate relationship to the world.  Working with massive amounts of material allows me to expose severe texture.  Cutting and tearing in this manner allows decisions of form to evolve out of surface. It also uncovers a more chaotic aspect of material in line with my conception of the geologic.  Similarly, surface color and texture are layered turbulent conversations between ash, flame and clay.  These produce diverse and dramatic results that enhance and realize forces applied in earlier stages of forming. 

I believe in cultivating a sense of material ruggedness.  Viewing the ceramic vessel as a crucial synergy between the material world and our cultural existence, conversations between mass and energy, raw clay and a wood-fired atmosphere and a variety of aggressive exterior marks transitioned into evident responsive interiors, develops an awareness to connections with potent material forces. Recognizing the active role geologic features have in contemporary existence informs conceptual decision making as well as scale, form, and surface in my work.  Dynamic marks in aggregate rich clay are the impetus for energetic forms that are substantial and present.  Combining rugged surfaces, massive amounts of diversely bodied clay and turbulent colorful wood-fired surfaces with the vessel asserts a continued geologic impact on our understanding of the conditions of contemporary life.