At some point, I lost myself. I felt indefinable and unbalanced, and because of this uncomfortable, feeling the need for reconciliation or redefinition. My aesthetic lies in, and reflects, my desperation to create order from the chaos that lies within me. My ceramic forms, contorted, though controlled, long and visually weighty, whether functional or not, explore the tension resulting from my pursuit.
As a culture we find comfort in the idea that ‘perfect balance’ is desirable, pursuable, and achievable. I believe that balance, propagated as such, is definitely pursuable but ultimately unattainable and unnecessary. Yet, we have arguably become engrossed with attraction to this ‘perfect’ idea and the life of comfort it suggests. Life becomes ordered, calculated and impassionate.
My work reflects some anxiety and the struggle to express my inner, indefinable, self in a society which demands structure and conformity, while alluding to the beauty of the flux within the tension created. Despite my anxiety, all of my forms are submissive to the attraction of balance, thoughtfully constructed and controlled to a desired effect. Some forms are comfortable… sharp, clean, and angular. Conversely, other forms are loose and whimsical, seemingly tipsy and less restrained, but no less controlled.
Wood-firing the work begins a dialog, expressing my anxiety by creating a play between the form and surface. The works are atypical of wood-fired work because of their divergence, in form, from most contemporary and traditional wood-fired work and creates a tension between surface and form not unlike my character. Interestingly and importantly, despite the tension and even consequent of the tension, the work is tightly, though oddly, balanced. This fact exemplifies my own feelings about the beauty and odd balance derived of an appreciation and enjoyment of the tension I experience in my life.
I cannot easily function in society without one aspect, the pursuit of so-called balance, and I cannot live without the other, the tension of experience outside expectation and order. Somewhere in-between and within the mundane and forced, and the free and natural, is an exciting moment of tension, balance, unpredictability, and spontaneity I hope to capture in my work.
