Green
I think of these sculptures as process drawings. Each form grows from a repeated gesture, evolving in response to the clay and to what is emerging. Hovering between biomorphism and abstraction, they activate our tendency to see faces. They owe something to the Green Man of English folklore, half-plant, half-human – a symbolic figure of unruly nature erupting into uncanny life.
I think of these sculptures as process drawings. Each form grows from a repeated gesture, evolving in response to the clay and to what is emerging. Hovering between biomorphism and abstraction, they activate our tendency to see faces. They owe something to the Green Man of English folklore, half-plant, half-human – a symbolic figure of unruly nature erupting into uncanny life.
Hooded
2022
Stoneware, ash glaze
19 x 27 x 5cm
For me, these hybrid beings notice our continuity with the more-than-human; they are a way of acknowledging ourselves to be riddled with wildness and with nonhuman life.
The materials themselves also matter, in their behaviours in the hand and in the kiln, in their transformations and flux, and in what they began as: earth and ash. Substances both elemental and domestic, connecting people and places. The homemade wood ash glaze and the clays were gifts from friends.
Nestle; detail of Hooded
detail of Fillette; Fillette
detail of Hooded; Nestle
Folding; Shelve
2022