New Clay Divas under the Harvest Moon
- Beauty is a form of genius- is higher indeed than genius as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon - Oscar Wilde
Here is the full moon AGAIN, that luminous orb making visible a cycle of energy that pulls the heaving tides as well as the blood in my veins. It energizes me...
I am trying to regulate myself. Sleep at more normal hours and still get work done. To conquer the rhythms that make it easier for me to work from 9-3 am than 9-3 pm.
I am in the process of developing a new group of relatively small clay sculptures for a show at Gallery in the Field. Using a new white clay is interesting. It works very differently. #66 has sand for grog. A finer grained clay than my old faithful #30 red. #65 is the same stoneware without any grog. Buttery like porcelain but easier to build with. It has a austere purity to it.. clean as a snow drift.
Less of a primadonna medium than porcelain.
Fran asked for an artist's statement. Always a good touchstone to reach within and find out why.
Here is the artist's statement I just wrote about the new clay pieces:
My first artistic efforts are very clear in my memory: I would sit in the sun on a huge, flat rock fashioning objects from pebbly red clay dug from a ditch in the meadow below my mother's garden. I made my first glazed goddess figurine at age eight, and they have revealed themselves to me ever since. Their manifestation is variable. Sometimes they are Madonnas, sometimes Venus figurines, more lately they are Divas. Powerful and mysterious women, connecting the spiritual and material world with grace and humor and song.That first glazed goddess was made at Hampton Elementary school out of clay brought in by an art-on-a-cart art teacher. Here I am so many years later, carving these graceful figures, waiting for them to tell me who they are, what they are holding; what are the attributes of these Madonnas?
