Fantasy and Nightmare as of Yesterday
Year: 2017
ceramic.
White stoneware with sand and grog, hand built with slab and coil. Iron oxide.
Fired to cone 6 in an electric kiln. From left to right:
Three-Legged Man: 5”W X 5”D X 16”H.
Forest Mushroom: 24” W X 6” D X 7”H.
Figure With Two Heads: 12” W X 5.5”D X 11”H.
Body: 9.5”W X 6.5”D X 9.5”H
When I decided to quite my full time job to focus on my own creative projects I experienced a mixture of emotions that I was not quite able to articulate so I tried finding them through building forms in clay.
In summer 2016, I told the head of the company where I worked that I wished to resign from my full time position at the end of the year. We were on his boat coming back from a day in Murano reviewing chandeliers I had designed for him. His eyes saddened. He said he would let me leave if I intended to come back after a year.
Taking a year off to focus on my ceramic work - the idea I had been vaguely dreaming of for many years was going to come true. I was not filled with a bursting happiness but rather a quiet emotion - a mixture of excitement for the new adventure and for realizing the step I wanted to take, a sadness for ending my work life of past 9 years, an eagerness for challenges, and something else I was not able to articulate. So before time altered my memory I tried finding it through building forms in clay. My interpretations are the group of 4 forms called Fantasy and Nightmare.
Three legged man, a two-headed figure and an amputated body, and a forest mushroom. I explored eeriness and uneasiness disguised in intimate but strange forms like folklore figures. I related magics and mysteries in growing forms like mushrooms born in the moon-lit night spreading throughout the dark forest.
Maybe they are my illusions. Will I see the ripening bananas on the plant or its flower so big it looks like it will swallow my head? Will I see the insect swarms creeping out from the guava fruit I just stepped on or smell the sweet scent from its broken skin. Maybe I get to decide if I see fantasy or nightmare.