The sun was sinking.  The hard stone of the day was cracked and light poured through its splinters.  Red and gold shot through the waves, in rapid running arrows, feathered with darkness.  Erratically rays of light flashed and wandered, like signals from sunken islands, or darts shot through laurel groves by shameless, laughing boys.  But the waves, as they neared the shore, were robbed of light, and fell in one long concussion, like a wall falling, a wall of grey stone, unpierced by any chink of light.

-Virginia Woolf, The Waves

 

This body of work is about the tranquility of nature and the meditational affect of maintaining a studio art discipline. It is amazing how at peace one feels when gazing at the ocean or while sitting by a campfire. Looking at nature in motion can be mesmerizing. Similarly, the human act of making things in a repeated manner can channel some of this natural power. Over the course of a year, I carved a plaster mold that captures the hypnotic effect of gazing at undulating waters. I press clay into this master mold and then glaze and paint on the repeated patterns to correspond to my own patterns of feeling and sensation. Waters ebb and flow; rivers rise, die, and change direction. As a maker, I respond to these changing tides by harnessing the flow and adding color.