After many years of working in ceramics I arrived on the premise that a structure is set up in the relationship between an object, its function, and the experience that function generates. This premise has been my creative point of departure and has hopefully contributed towards succinctness in the expression of the conceptual and intuitive components involved in my work.

My current work has not necessarily come into being in a linear or self determined way as I expected. There was certainly an academic process of resolution involved where one idea was refined through another, but it was the immediacy of unforeseen outside influences that forced me to allow myself to act on creative impulses in a more direct way. The thrust in this work is motivated by my desire to express my experiences of the near misses and vanishing acts in my life. I think of these objects as a means to express ideas of passage and transformation, as vessels for contemplation and reflection, and other pieces as a direct comment on our perception of reality.

I have searched in many ways and forms to express these ideas and they are, at this moment in time, resolved in the following work.

The Funnel Forms
One day while using a funnel to fuel up my Coleman cook stove I noticed that the funnel possessed a beautiful shape. As a formal shape it is not designed to have a specific top or bottom. Various associations can be made with the form depending on its positioning. Of course, with one position there is the association to domestic function, but in another position the basic elements in the shape relate to formal sculpture, and in another to architecture with impressions of psychological interiors.

The funnel functions as a means to focus material and to allow passage. It is symbolic of the idea of life passage where one can pass through an event and become transformed with inner essence unchanged.

The Zen Pot Holders – Which one is smoking the cigarette?
This kind of communication about the ZPH’s is more easily experienced in a riddle than in words. In many ways the current work reflects ongoing sculptural concerns, but its content is driven by my obsession with the idea of the performance of objects and their link to the domain of function that often distinguishes craft from art. The Zen Pot Holders is an elaboration of the idea associated with an earlier piece titled Watching Burning Toast. WBT was an attempt to express the phenomenon of zoning out and by doing so (as it was pointed out to me) I accidentally made a Zen Pot. The Zen Pot Holders are a comment on the essence and order of form and function.

Strange Fruit and the Pod Bombs
These pieces are not included in the exhibition but relate to some of the work.
Is what we see is what we get? Everything, in a way, is a vessel. Familiar objects and entities can hold things that we cannot always see and touch. Like souvenir pebbles taken from the beach, things can hold memories, personal experience, and even reflect perceptions of ones place with reality. We may also believe to understand from the outside familiar things such as beehives, cocoons and living beings but may know nothing of the activity in the inside. Strange Fruit is a comment on the insidious nature of disease and The Pod Bombs are a tribute to those on the front lines.

Urns of Endearment
I can’t believe the number of lidded jars I have made over the years that have ended up as funerary urns! Urns of Endearment are sculptural vessels connected to the tradition of the craftsman serving the needs of the community and created in the spirit of affirming life and living. These works are prototypes to a series of actual funerary urns that hold ashes and function as a means to allow the remains of art believers to literally be in the realm of notion, language, and idea.