T&A IV

I clearly remember the first time I saw someone seriously alter a thrown pot, it was during a Ron Meyers demo in which he threw a soft and casual cylinder and just picked it right off the wheel head and pushed it oval to form the basis of an oval baker form. I had only been making pots for less than a year when I saw this and what it immediately instilled in me was that almost (!) anything is possible with clay. I have seen the spectrum from magnificent trompe l'oeil to the abstract sculpture of Volkos and just a bit of everything in between and I am always impressed at what clay is capable of; infinite artists, infinite possibilities. After seeing Meyers work, I set about trying to figure out how this approach applied to me and what I see in my head and started making simple oval bakers, squared forms and other thrown and altered pieces and after a trip to Nara I became exceptionally interested in Japanese bells, dotaku.

Over the years I have made a wide array of t&a forms based on dotaku with the most interesting and creative to make are the one that are thrown, altered, cut and reassembled to create crisp lines, ribs and other accentuated high points such as the one in the illustration. This bell form was glazed in my ame-yu with copper accents creating an alternating rain pattern on each concave level and is finished off with impressed lugs and a neck and mouth which mimics the form. When I look at these forms it is almost inconceivable that the genesis was a Ron Meyers demo but the seed was planted, took hold and came out as something that is easily associated with who I am and how I work, I don't think I could really ask for more.