About the Work: Dwell
Dwell was a solo exhibition in Gallery 8, at the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton VA, The exhibition featured 7 large, new ceramic and stainless steel wall sculptures and a group of vessels produced over the 9 month residency period. The title broadly references the reality of our situation as inhabitants in a world with rapidly changing climate, and a seeming inability to grasp to scale and consequences of our plight. This work continues a long interest of mine in the metaphorical potential of water imagery to reference one’s life travel through a vaguely defined environment. In this case I see the water as again a reference to an uncertain outcome, as well as perhaps most critical element in the impact of the thermal crisis we face.
The wall sculptures are made using large mono-printed ceramic tiles, single fired and then cut to size with a diamond saw. The process used is one I developed in which the image is drawn and painted or screen printed with under-glazes directly on a large plaster slab, after which a layer of casting slip is poured over it. When the layer of liquid slip solidifies, it is peeled off and dried. This clay print is fired to about 2050 F, and them cut to final size and shape with a diamond saw. Subsequent firings are used to add glaze or slip to the image. The stainless steel frames provide structural support and the freedom to compose forms on the vertical space of the wall. Steel are fabricated last to fit the tiles, and welded into final form, after which the tiles are permanently mounted.
These pieces read quite differently from a distance than they do from close range. Like many prints, they have considerable detail and nuance that reveals itself with closer inspection. The plaster slab – printing plate acts as something of a record of the drawing activity that has gone on previously, and there are marks and incised line work which become part of new prints in an organic way.
This body of work returns to an interest in flat signs and signals from maritime navigation that I first explored in a 1997 exhibition entitled Medusa’s Raft. The images continue to function as signals, as well as addressing the tension between the object as a flat image and as a physical clay object, framed in steel. Pennant For Jasper , 1997, from that show was an homage to Jasper John’s famous "Flag" painting series from 1958, and his investigation of object as image. This awareness of the physical object and its dialog with the image that makes it up remains a key concern of mine. In some ways I see that dialog between surface (decoration) and form, as a defining characteristic of the ceramic field. In much of my work I am trying to highlight or explore the tension between overall form and surface imagery, through a distillation and flattening of form and emphasis of the pictorial potential of wall mounted works.
Two of the largest works in the exhibition are Pinwheel: DENY, and Pinwheel: HEAT, both new works that address the crisis of climate change and particularly the impact upon the marine environment. Utilizing the iconography of marine signal flags, these works investigate related four letter words and their resulting images, within a rigid structure. The design is based on the shape of a pinwheel - a toy associated with childhood and carefree leisure. Moved by the breeze or one's own breath, the wheel spins freely in response to its environment, exercising no control. I see it as a corollary to the reckless indifference the current administration shows to the obvious consequences of global warming. The prints that makeup the tiles begin with an established alphabet of color and pattern, which has been visually manipulated in a variety of ways. The graphic language of the flags is accessible and even familiar, yet functions as a carrier of a darker message.
This graphic source is continued with the works entitled Red Shift and Heel, but with a less didactic composition. In these works the flag image becomes a visual unit in a broader compositional structure which can be read generally as a signal of alarm the consequences of political deceit and inaction.
The sculptures entitled False Return, Batter, and Iris utilize screen printed imagery of water as well as drawn elements, in a more overt reference to the marine environment. The illusionism introduced with the photographic source material is partially veiled with over-layed slip work in False Return, aquamarine glaze in Iris, or other tile elements in Batter, imbedding the pictorial experience within a specific structural form.