My ceramic sculpture includes large scale standing forms and smaller macquettes, as well as wall pieces. Of the wall works, a recent body of work focused on strongly graphic images made as ceramic mono-prints, fired and then assembled in framing structures of welded steel. The process used is one I developed in which the image is drawn and painted with engobes (vitreous slips) on a large plaster slab, after which a layer of casting slip is poured over it, and when it solidifies it is peeled off. This clay drawing is cut to shape when leather hard and then single fired to about 2050 F. Subsequent firings are used to add overglaze enamels to provide intense color and a textural paint-like surface.
I have come to recognize that for most of my career I have been exploring images that speak metaphorically about travel, travel on roads, travel across water, and ultimately travel through one's life, attempting to understand, predict and guide its direction. Throughout our lives we are faced with choices that alter the course or outcome. All of us have felt some doubt about our choices and direction in life. I am interested in how one reconciles uncertain yearnings with actual needs and come to terms with the personal, social and media generated expectations of our lives.
The forms I have been working with through the last decade have been drawn from objects associated with water travel, such as buoys anchors, oars and fixed markers and flags. The reference intended is that of directional travel through a vaguely defined environment. The difficulties of navigation on water relate for me to similar uncertainties that surround individual's choices in life.
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