winter and spring 2007

Here are a couple pieces I did during the 2007 school year. I am becoming more interested in color, maybe a response to the dark earthy colors I was getting with the wood firing. I am also becoming interested in making fewer pieces, spending more time on each, investing more in them individually. I had a couple interesting conversations with some students last year about art as pollution. Here we are making all of these physical objects, assuming they have enough value to deserve the space they occupy, to deserve the resources required to make them. We talked about how if you are going to bother making physical objects, sending them out into the world, they better be good!

Hopefully these two deserve to exist (this line of thought is a bit tongue in cheek, but I think it is worth considering). They have scraffito designs that are pretty light hearted. The face is one I have been using relatively frequently. It is just a face, meant to be a little child like. I enjoy the bike as a symbol of health and active living, an adventurous spirit. I was going for the the classic 70's-80's ten speed. The hand is taken from those prehistoric cave paintings where people would put their hand on the wall and then spray ink over it, casting an ink shadow, a record of their presence. To me that is a symbol that says, "Here I am, I am alive. I exist and I am conscious of that fact." I think that gets to the root of why we make art. We exist and we are conscious of that fact. We know we are alive and are able to reflect on our own existence, therefor we make art. It is something that separates us from other animals.