A new year, a new decade, a new beginning. So many things change and yet the incorrigible remain the same. I continue to make sculpture, working from thrown forms to make heads, houses, flowers, logs, product tubes, tin cans and a new form, cones. The cones are based on ceramic sugar molds, used to purify sugar, which were produced in the hundreds of thousands from the medieval period onward in Europe and North America. The story of sugar is inextricable from the history of slavery and colonialism, and thus fraught. I encountered the form first in a video about mudlarking on the Thames with Nicola White and Richard Hemery here. Because ceramic cones and other materials were used to help reinforce the banks of the Thames, fragments often show up along the shore. More of the history of the pots can be found here, and more on the history of slavery and the sugar trade here. I have been using the cone to think about what we produce and consume, what take into our minds and bodies, and how that changes us. In an age of rampant social media and alternative facts, this seems like an ever-more-important thing to consider.
Early in 2020, the world became introduced to Covid-19, experiencing a global pandemic that has altered our world utterly and indefinitely. I am working in my studio, practicing safe public-health measures, and making works that respond to this new situation.
Early in 2020, the world became introduced to Covid-19, experiencing a global pandemic that has altered our world utterly and indefinitely. I am working in my studio, practicing safe public-health measures, and making works that respond to this new situation.