Why

I'm doing more research on seed shapes. I find the textures and rhythms of seeds and seed structure fascinating. It's why the textures, outlines and shapes keep reappearing in my work. I need to go back to the basic and fundamental expression of botanical and animal life to make my point. Or to connect with myself and connect myself with my origins. There is a tendency to detach from the beings that we are intrinsically when we are using computers, satellites, electronic forms of communication. I am aware of the dichotomy of what I try to convey in my work and the ways I get that message out, beyond the clay forms I create. Currently, so much of the way we interact is another step removed from our true nature. It also seems to me, the more we practice these forms of communication, the more we forget where we came from. I feel quite strongly, that when we begin to forget where we came from, the pain we feel upon tragedies become more confusing and surprising, as if we are profoundly shocked that suffering can happen to us. The suffering we feel is profound, yes, but it's the confusion and shock I see people experience, including myself, that picks at my brain. The virtual world is just that, virtual but not corporal. Have we really disassociated that much that we think that planetary life exists "out there" in pixels, words on a flat panel? I guess it's why I return again and again to seeds, sea life, anatomy, life textures and combinations of them.

Devil's Claw, Adaptation exhibit, Irvinton House Museum, 2010

Not to mention the subject that life itself encompasses, sexuality. It's almost comical the way humans in many cultures regard the very function of life, reproduction and sexuality that expresses it in the entire continuum of forms, as something to be compartmentalized, shunned, moralized, you name it. I pick on Western American culture because it is the one I grew up with and continue to experience on a daily basis. I am not advocating for anything when I comment in my sculptures and functional forms except, maybe, to say, "Lighten up, people!" And when I say " the very function of life, reproduction and sexuality that expresses it," I am not narrowing the field to an idealized version of motherhood over fatherhood, heterosexuality over homosexuality. Quite the opposite. Sexuality exists on a continuum, regardless of whether life is reproduced or not. Which is why I find the discourse and vitriol surrounding adult homosexuality, equality in marriage in current US politics and so on, to be so, well, juvenile. Really, people. Lighten up.

In my forms and textures are paths and connections, cell walls and tendrils. It's all defined by the highs and lows, the textures on the plain, the depressions and the ridges. It's reminiscent of the world we live in and are part of. If I can't be conscious of it while being inundated by flat LCD displays and glowing monitors, I can feel it under my fingers when I hold a cup or pour a teapot or look at a sculpture and wonder when that organic reference first entered my brain in my lifetime that popped out of my hands and became the object in front of me.