Monday, July 1, 2019

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

I stumbled on this image the other day while collecting up a group of slides to be converted to digital images and had honestly forgotten I had made this set. Back in the mid-90s, while still living in Cleveland I was asked if I would like to be in a figurative show and given that I had three months to prepare, I thought, what the heck, why not. I remember making two sets of these stone texture cups and pitchers, several cup and saucer sets with "Mayan" inspired figures and a large covered house box with a series of alien life forms, really landscapeman designs on the piece and a couple of large plates with painted nudes on them. It was a fun task as it got me to think a little outside the box and away from safer designs that I felt comfortable with and out of this came some ideas that I use to this day like the Rapunzel , Europa and the Bull and Leda and the Swan. The illustrated set was easily made from cutting out slabs and then squeezing them until they create a puffy, three dimensional form and adding handles which also carry on the anthropomorphic attitude of the pieces the stone texture and inlay accents just finished off the pieces. It is odd how I couldn't remember the pieces until I saw the slide and then it actually brought me back to where I was when they were made, back at my Hillbrook Road address in Cleveland Heights with the ever present  music playing in the background.