I create functional and non-functional high-fire stoneware ceramic vessels and raku. My primary media are high fire reduction, high fire soda processes and low fire raku. Raku and soda both provide an element of the unknown and unpredictable. They rely on the chance kiss of the fire in the firing to provide visual texture to each piece. The unpredictability of the process parallels my life and serves as a microcosm for the outside world as I work in the inside world of my studio.
Vessels are a metaphor for our humanity. We contain and hold feelings and emotions and thoughts. We suppress them and subsume them in other feelings and thoughts and at times, we break and release what we contain. Vessels and people chip and crack and are repaired, bandaged and glued back together. On the surface damage appears and it can run through the entire body of the vessel, but sometimes those patches and cracks and chips can result in a new form and a new construction.
My vessels are scarred and marked and remade and reformed during the creation process. As they are fired, they are marked by the fire and become something that I created, but at the same time they become something more and have to stand on their own as they are finished.