On The Surface

This is a small box that I made. Dave used it in one of his recent saggar firing experiments.



The rusty red streak is from steel wool. The other colors are from a mixture of copper carbonate, borax, sea salt, and sawdust.



This is one of my favorite recent pieces. I think this is awesome.




It's rough and rusty and blackened. It looks like you might have found it laying along a hiking path. If every piece I made from here on out had this surface quality, I would be infinitely happier with my work.

Maybe I should explain?

One of the things I try to do. No. One of the things. No. When I am happiest with my work is when it is as close to nature as possible. No. When I am happiest with my work is when it looks as though nature could have made it. Yes. Okay. That. When I am happiest with my work, it looks as though the sun and the elements of nature could have produced it. It looks like something that. No. It looks like. No. It's rough and it looks like humans haven't ruined it yet, the way they ruin everything, by manipulating it too much. Yes, that.

Here it is as a mostly coherent thought:

When I am happiest with my work, it looks like nature--the sun, the wind, rain, time, all the elements of nature--could have produced it. It's rough and it looks like humans haven't ruined it yet, the way they tend to ruin everything, by manipulating it too much.

When I am happiest with my work, it looks like something--a rock, a stick, a feather, a rusted something--that you might pick up from the ground on a walk and put it in your pocket just because you liked it, just because it seemed important or because you were curious about it or you were drawn to it for some reason outside of curiosity.

Here's a story:

When I lived in Tokyo, I collected feathers while I was out and about the city. Moving to such a different place had stripped me of all my worn, familiar talismans and I often felt wary or unprotected, so I began to collect feathers, mostly crow feathers. The crows in Tokyo are enormous, loud, fearless, and notoriously clever and I wanted--it felt important--to carry some piece of that with me, so I collected their feathers when I found them.  I sometimes want what I make to be what those feathers were for me, talismans that remind that people who find them that they have something within them that is enormous, loud, fearless, and notoriously clever, and that that thing is a natural thing, handed to them by nature, over and over.