TETRARC
IN INDIA
In September of 2002 I began working with Ray Meeker at the Golden Bridge Pottery, and in the immersion of my life in the medium of clay I have found a dynamism that combines the plastic arts with the drama of performance.
In a parallel search for simplicity, surety and stability, I have been inspired by Sengai's seminal Zen painting of the circle, square and triangle. I have been exploring 'root forms'; rendering them in three dimensions as a sphere, a cube and a tetrahedron.
It was in 2006 while playing with some scraps, I pressed a tiny ball of clay between the index finger and thumb of both hands and discovered what I call a tetrarc. Scaling up this half-inch maquette to 18 inches, I arrived at a surprisingly compelling form which has been variously described as a hyperbolic paraboloid, an axe, a whale's tail, a vertebra from the spine; the tetrarc has grown to be the spinal column of my artistic life
TETRARC
IN JAPAN
I was awarded a scholarship by The Japan Foundation called JENESYS program to stay and work at Shigaraki Ceramic Sculpture Park (SCCP) in Shigaraki Japan. I lived and worked there from Sept 2008 - March 2009. During this time I created a 3 foot size Tetrarc shape. I had come upon this form in 2006, while working in Golden Bridge Pottery in India. The sculpture created in Japan was created in the low shrinkage sccp stoneware. It was fired in a gas kiln up to 1300 deg C with Shino glaze on top of dark and white slips.
