the dirt

When I first came to California, I took a workshop at the Mendocino Arts Center with sculptor Stephen de Staebler. He talked of just grabbing pieces around his studio and reusing them on new work, which at the time horrified me. I had assumed that artists create a piece and that’s it, there’s a end to the process, that’s how you call a piece ‘finished’. But I’ve learned over time that you are never finished making art or working on a piece, there is always evolution but hardly ever resolution. One piece builds on the next and what you’ve learned challenges you to explore more. I’ve really come to like that this can be really exciting and exploratory for a series of work and now it’s become a normal part of the process for me.
Below are the same 200+/- pieces from the Hive Series installed in two very different ways.

I’m planning two large installations for the upcoming Clay & Glass Exhibit in Healdsburg CA and I’ll be reusing existing pieces to create entirely new works. Both pieces are from the Bone Series but one will be wall mounted and one will be suspending from the ceiling.  Below is a sketch of the wall piece I plan to create. The lines will be steel cables connecting the ceramic pieces together and they will be floating a few inches off the wall. I’m hoping that with gallery lighting, this will cast intense shadows on the wall and enhance the negative space between the pieces.

I love that while I’ve worked with these pieces many times before the outcome will be new and the process of installing will be honed. There is still the element of surprise, the danger of failure and the possibilities of learning.

The first time I took my art out into the world was also one of the first of many big road trips I’d done with my husband (although we were just dating at the time), this was probably circa 2000. It was actually his idea to bring along some of my work, so I really can’t take credit for this idea but we wrapped up a few pieces and tucked them in among all of our camping gear.

I just discovered the photos of the trip where we cruised up the coast towards Mendocino and onward to the Oregon border where we eventually turned south at Grants Pass. Then through Shasta and Redding and into Lassen National Forest, that’s where these photos were taken. If you’ve been to the studio, these pieces are still sitting on the deck by the succulents. Eventually we drove down the Eastern Sierras as far south as Mono Lake before heading through Yosemite and home again. This is some well traveled art!

All of this was before I had a real studio to work out of, before I had the idea to create work specifically for outdoor spaces and way before ‘where art & nature meet’ become my mantra. I love that over 15 years later, this idea still feels new and exciting. I love that my husband is still willing to fill a backpack with ceramic sculptures and haul it off into the wilderness. I love that I’m still discovering where art & nature meet.

The New Science of the Creative Brain on Nature

Outside Magazine | By: Carolyn Gregoire

I have always found a sense of focus and calm after being out in nature but this study proves that spending time on the trail is good for your creativity too. “In a 2012 study, for example, Strayer found that backpackers were 50 percent more creative after they had spent four days out on the trail.” read more…

#optoutside it’s good for your creativity!

Going through old photos and cds over the weekend and I discovered some gems, I’ll share some goodies with you over the next week of posts. The thing that was amazing was seeing the continuity of my work over a decade of making it.

The piece on the left was made in 2001, with some leftover clay I managed to snag, fired in someone else’s kiln before I had my own studio and carved with a sandblaster at someone else’s studio I was working at then. Basically, I was just out of school didn’t have the equipment or studio space but somehow I managed to create this piece and someone bought it the first time I exhibited it at a local show. And I still kinda like it, which is rare for older work.

The piece on the right was made in 2013. This one was made with a clay I knew would work best for this process, it was tended to, carried carefully around the studio, padded with foam as it dried to help insure its survival. It was one of over a hundred pieces in this series, had hours of trial and error to make it not collapse in the firing process. It too sold at its first exhibit and I still like it.

Over a decade of working with the same form, the same technique of removing clay, still trying to find the balance between the organic and geometric and still not sure if I’ve figured it out yet. I love that the process of learning and creating never seems to have an end.

More from the Nest Series here…

The first batch of new bone pieces have come out of the glaze firing and…

These are the smaller of the pieces that I’ve made so far, but I’m happy with the results! The bigger pieces will be making their way through the kiln and I need to build A LOT more to create the large installation that I’m imagining.