My small figurative ceramics or sculptures seem to work in a different way from the pots.
They certainly bring into play another part of me. With the figures there are few of the craft criteria of workmanship, functionality, beauty or proportion to be fulfilled. Freed from these constraints everything becomes more exploratory, open, more like play.
The innate characteristics of clay – its impressionableness, its capacity to mimic other materials, its leaning towards the grotesque can be enjoyed more. Every piece is a new beginning. There is less repetition and not much technique. I am not honing a craft. I have no particular method. I have deliberately sought no instruction.
I start with an idea then find my way, preferably rather quickly. I feel impatient. Perhaps I can finish it in one go, but often have to come back later and put bits together, hollow it out. Later I will slip it, decorate it.
These figures start from many different places.
It might be a song, a writer I like, a poem, a dream, a comment on something. How they might fit into a house, a life, is not definite. As a presence, something to hold flowers, something that beckons and baffles, or provokes a smile, or a frown.
Occasionally I have made videos where I animate the figures (birds often) by shaking, pulling or lifting them. Some of the videos were made for Galerie Kartòn, a fictional but to me real gallery, with its own stable of artists – Don Cleaver and others. The walls were made of mounting board and correx, the dimensions of the rooms two or three feet long max.
And the birds… well I like birds, and I just hope my birds are not an insult to the beautiful real feathered creatures. Perhaps they are more people, or people on the way to becoming birds. They started from scraps of clay, the leftovers. Inevitably I started to develop a technique, and intent. But I hope I still don’t know quite what I’m doing, or if they’re any good. It’s fine to make things sometimes where you can’t really go wrong. It’s relaxing.
