Shore

Shore emphasizes the diverse meanings of the title through this group of three distinct series. To brace, to bulwark, or to sustain. To block, to check, or to stave. Cut, shorn, or clipped. A margin, an edge, or the land between high & low tide.

 

bring the end in line with the beginning combines pottery & architecture, two approaches to sheltering that employ ceramics, with an examination of the themes of containers & containment in À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust. It shows a continuation of my studies of line & curve, circle & square, sphere & cube as well as the complex decorative strategies effected by the rich surface treatments particular to ceramics such as marbling. Recognizing that time is typically measured on the x-axis of a graph, the paraboloids are oriented horizontally, throwing the end back to the beginning in time instead of the beginning in mood. The directrix (the reference line that gives a parameter for the geometry of a parabola) is displaced across the form in several steps, as a cube splintered into sheets.

earthenware with slip & glaze, wood fired stoneware with slip, 2012-2014

 

tripelgänger is ceramics in three versions after architectural thumbnail sketches by François Blanciak. A parallel is drawn from Blanciak’s book, Siteless, as ceramics flows through contexts of painting, sculpture, & architecture. Shadowing shows ceramics’ ambivalent relationship with these three, oscillating between distinction & indeterminacy. Meanwhile ceramics’ durability in material & history provides the necessary friction.

burnished micaceous earthenware, stoneware, wood-fired stoneware with slip, 2013-2014

 

Untitled is inspired by Lee Bontecou’s drawings & sculptures where everything is centered, nothing is grounded, & everything is untitled. I make an ungrounded gesture in clay that sets the path for its surface. Then I cast a shadow on paper. There are fourteen or fifteen parts that combine ceramics I made at Southern Methodist University (SMU), Dallas & paper I made at Dieu Donné Papermill, New York. The strength of Bontecou’s distinct sculpture & drawing led me to combine the two disciplines in Untitled. I make the horizontal slit in contrast to vertiginous, transcendent aspirations to the sublime in for example paintings by Barnett Newman. His fourteen Stations of the Cross are often exhibited with a fifteenth, an example I follow in Untitled.

marbled earthenware with gouache on linen & denim paper, 2014-2015

2015, Southwestern University, Sarofim School of Fine Arts Gallery, Georgetown, TX