Limits Of Knowing

These pieces explore limits of knowing. Knowing of self, technologies, ecology, histories, brain/body. In several, a funnel brings external worlds into the interior chthonic space. Small bits re-emerge in Braille text and imagery on the surface. Inspired in part by shapes of ancient kiln forms seen in museums in China, and by readings about planetary geology, each incorporates a layered history of clays, starting with stoneware clays, moving through proto-porcelain clays to true porcelain, recapitulating the evolution of ceramics and speaking to geological structures on the planet. How are we connected to and how can we know deep time? Each layer asks, “have all possibilities of this clay been exploited”?, before moving to another, more refined layer.

In Chapter 2 of Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects, he describes the evolution of an Olduvai stone chopping tool, saying, Those extra chips on the edge of the chopping tool tell us that right from the beginning, we – unlike other animals – have felt the urge to make things more sophisticated than they need to be.Objects carry powerful messages about their makers, and the chopping tool is the beginning of a relationship between humans and the things they create which is both a love affair and a dependency. (p. 13). I find this a most provocative statement. It calls up internal conversations I have each time I start a piece, is this enough, is this too much? It interests me to think about hierarchies in materials and forms and how those manifest in culture and in my work. All photos, Stefan Seskis.

Photos: Stefan Seskis.

Parts Tumble

2025 ( 8.5” x 15” x 9” ) - porcelains, stoneware, Braille.

Braille text: “parts tumble on one another, increasing, with each confusion, the landscape’s beauty,” from Assembling California by John McPhee.

With Each Confusion

2025 ( 10.5” x 19” x 12” ) - porcelains, stoneware, glaze, Braille.

Braille text: “parts tumble on one another, increasing, with each confusion, the landscape’s beauty,” from Assembling California by John McPhee

Tumbling

2025 ( 8.5” x 18” x 11” ) - Stoneware, porcelains, C. 6 glazes, decals.

Braille text: “parts tumble on one another, increasing, with each confusion, the landscape’s beauty,” from Assembling California by John McPhee.

Tumble

2025 ( 9” x 11” x 8” ) - porcelains, glaze, Braille.

Braille text: “parts tumble on one another, increasing, with each confusion, the landscape’s beauty,” from Assembling California by John McPhee.

Blue Evening Bats

2025 ( 18” x 16” x 16”) - porcelain, glaze, gold paint.

Erratic lines run across the form, based on aerial patterns created as bats swoop through the evening dusk.

Poorly understood, this highlights their critical role in agricultural insect control. The large blue disc pay homage to their navigation by echolocation.

Cartesian Vortex Series II

2025 ( 36” x 24” x 11” ) - overall, porcelain, underglaze, glaze

In his 1644 Principia Philosophiae, Rene Descartes made a drawing of galaxies and comets as a network of interlocking vortices filled with ethers, within which planets such as our earth circle around the sun. Each system exerted an influence on the adjacent system thus keeping them in a kind of stasis or order.

While he was wrong, he was, like all of us, doing the best with what heknew at the time. The drawing is compelling in its angular shapes, lines, and circles representing suns which are captured in these pieces

*2025, ( 13” x 14” x 12” ) - Stoneware, Porcelain, Japanese Paper, and Wood*

Metaphor

Braille text: “dialogue across distances”, From an article by Parul Seghal, New Yorker, January 2023, quote is Metaphors allow us to dialogue across distances.

Ambiguous

*2024, ( 9” x 20” x 11” ) - Stoneware, Porcelain, and Glaze*

Braille text: “a taste for evidence, a feeling for ambiguity”, from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s speech to the College de France and included in the book, In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays.