My work is about the ever changing web of relationships that surround us. Individuals make contact to create relationships, relationships collide to create systems. These systems change over time in response to the other systems around them. I envision my world as an infinite collection of active counterparts, individuals symbiotically wriggling and moving and jostling for space and resources. In this sea of systems, of relationships, I sit and try to untangle it, sit and try to communicate what I see changing, being created, or disappearing into the past. This is why I work in our most durable medium, porcelain, and in our longest unbroken historical record, pottery. My work, functional because it carries information, rather than coffee or seeds or whatever, will be understandable to anyone with an eyeball and the ability to think abstractly. My goal is to make work which still speaks clearly in 10,000 years, and more importantly to convey the complexity and richness of the world in which I am most fortunate to live.
I live and work in Downeast Maine in a home I’m building on the side of a glacial mountain of rocks. I often fire my work at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, in Newcastle, Maine, using their wood and salt kilns to add varying amounts of chaos, chance, or natural variation to my controlled etchings.
I have been a potter since 1999, and working in black and white porcelain on sgraffito since 2004. I have shown my work all over the world, and in 2019, completed a very limited edition book entitled “Reflect, Adapt, and Persevere” with co-author Carri Lange, about my travels and thoughts on environmental philosophy. In 2020, we published it through Amazon, and it’s available here
FIRING METHODS:
Gas firing with an oxygen rich atmosphere is the simplest type of firing for me. I know just how the pieces will emerge, should they not crack in the heating and cooling process. There is very little chance, chaos, or natural variability created by this type of firing, and I tend to use it to speak specifically about moments in time, or systems that seem stable in some way. This firing lasts around 24 hours total kiln time, and the top temperature reached is about 2,250f.
Salt firing is similar to gas firing above with three major exceptions: heat, oxygen, and salt. The kiln is taken to about 2,340 degrees, with the amount of oxygen inside the kiln controlled to increase vibrancy of color and a tightness in the porcelain body, and at 2,300, salt is thrown into the kiln. The salt molecule splits apart and the sodium remains in the kiln to create a highly caustic atmosphere which etches the surface of the clay and melts it into glass. This kind of firing gives me some variation and chance, and allows me to add a small amount of chaos to whatever I’m talking about in any given piece. Because the porcelain is more translucent at this higher temperature, I am also able to more fully include light and transparency into my visual vocabulary. This type of firing takes about 4 days total kiln time.
Wood firing is most similar to salt firing in all respects except two: fuel and exhaust. In a wood burning kiln, wood is burned at a rate of about 1 cord for the 30 hours of a firing. This will bring the kiln to 2,340, and as in the salt firing, salt is pitched into the kiln at 2,300f. All that wood, though, creates its own chaos, with air turbulence, flame contact on the clay pieces, wood ash creating its own caustic environment and glass on the pieces, as well as a constantly fluctuating oxygen rich and starved atmosphere in the kiln. I use this firing to impart large degrees of chance or chaos into a visual conversation. I never know what will happen in this kind of firing, and can barely control the amount of chance in each firing. This process takes 6 days total kiln time, with 4 1/2 of those being cooling the kiln down slowly.