My Studio, where the muses, geniuses and house elves live in the walls
When I pinpoint the forces behind my current ceramic art-making, I see that they are personal manifestations of what I call Heart, Mystery and Juice.
Heart is the Subjective Narrative: What is alive in me right now? What are my cultural references? What stories do I remember and tell myself? What about my love of words? And what do the answers to these questions look like?
Mystery lies in Integrating Forms and Surfaces: Drawing a vessel and sculpting its skin. Spheres. Circles. Explosions. Every possible expression of the human face. Surfaces that are accidental or weathered. Soft grayed colors with bright punctuations. Red! All is not revealed, even in hundreds of attempts, and I like that.
Juice is the Big Concepts Made Visible: It is the groundswell that informs the first two forces of Heart and Mystery. What do these Big Concepts add when consciously elicited: The Golden Mean? Truth and Deception? Non-verbal states and sensibilities? The One and the Many? Anger and fear? Big Love? The Empyrean? I don’t necessarily know, but I aim to find out.
At the end of an ideal creative effort, I want a piece which satisfies me so much that I no longer feel urged to manipulate it. I also want it to reveal its Heartfelt, Mysterious and Juicy qualities in such an offhanded and inevitable way that it seems to have sprung into reality through a universal sleight-of-hand. That is asking a lot, I know, but to me the creative struggle is not only about making visual art which incorporates the vital forces which I am moved to express, it is about becoming them myself in the same artless way.
