Formations

I rarely begin with a fixed idea of what a piece should become. I am more interested in starting with clay and following what emerges when I change the way I work with it. I might throw a form on the wheel, build from slabs, or make many small pinched pieces and join them around a central core. Sometimes I add sand to the clay, combine different clay bodies or alter a surface with minerals. Each approach opens a different set of possibilities. When working with different clays, I often place irregular pieces of white, brown or dark clay together and roll them into a slab. I am not trying to create a precise pattern. I am drawn to the unevenness that comes from pressing one material into another: shifting edges, finger marks, changes in colour and the places where the clays meet. The slabs can then be cut, folded and joined into a form, carrying the history of their making with them.

Other pieces develop very differently. A simple white form thrown on the wheel can become almost black through a manganese wash. A pale, sand-speckled sculpture might grow slowly from dozens of individually pinched pieces joined one by one. Sometimes a fissure, an exposed seam or a repair becomes part of the work rather than something to conceal. I am drawn to these moments where the process leaves evidence of itself. This is what brings the pieces in Formations together. They do not share one technique or even one kind of clay. What connects them is an attention to transformation through pressure, joining, layering, minerals, heat and the hand. I respond to what begins to appear: one decision suggests another, a join changes a silhouette and an irregularity becomes the part I want to keep. Marks, seams, textures and shifts in colour remain visible. The finished form is not entirely planned and not entirely accidental. It emerges through the exchange between material, hand and process.