Art and Life

Crucifixion, stoneware clay with cone 10 reduction glaze and resist corpus, 25" by 6", 2009, Blackwater Bluff Pottery



Whenever I do a pottery exhibition of artwork, I try to center it around a theme. This show was around a series of sketches I had done at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England where there are some lovely examples of classical and brittish pots. I chose shapes and colors which spoke to the inner landscape of my own experience here at Blackwater Bluff. They had a decidedly asian bent and yet the overall effect was more diverse than simply asian forms.

As I look back on the exhibitions I wonder how my internal life as a Christian and my art are intertwined. I wonder at how God made us so that we would be so in God's image that we too could create - could be generative even if not female. Pottery and hospitality are my generativity. The pots I make with my hands and the friendships I make with my love and my hospitality are the two most important aspects of my life.

I am often stunned at how much our culture produces - how much money and how many services and how many things. But when you look at art and craft, there seems to be so much less of it than when times were slowere and people were less wealthy.

I notice the lives of those I know who have no creative outlet and I want to lean over and whisper "live!" To make things simply for the love of the making is an act of self-offering - risky, hard, scary and rewarding.