Of the genesis of the Chick-a-dee plates, Jim wrote, “Last year after a good snow storm the following day was absorbent. The fresh layer of pristine snow created a ‘visual acoustic’ where not only sound was absorbed by the snow but light as well… a sort of cotton in the ears effect, where external sensory [perception] is tempered making one acutely aware of being situated within and part of a place. It was with my awareness of this that a chick-a-dee flew by and decided to rest on my outstretched hand and sing one clean isolated song to the world.” How can this sort of experience be recorded or discussed in clay? Clearly it requires something beyond a literal, visual picture to convey such an intense, encompassing moment. Jim offers us plates. Plates have a particular role, they display food or (in our culture) they carry individual helpings of food. Food – essential, nutritious, charged with emotion, sensuality, ceremony and custom – is contained in a distinct area – the plate. Jim’s collection of plates obviously are not made for eating off, the plate and what it contains is one, a bearer of soul food, a fragment of time, a focussed gaze, charged elements encircled by a rim. read more...