Vessels and Shells Series

From birth we begin to accumulate a library of patterns in our head, so that we can begin to get our bearings in the world. Our mother's face, comforting and disturbing sounds, smells...  In the summers of childhood, clouds become dragons or three masted ships. Patterns collected become templates and matched to wisps of vapor.

We live by patterns, matching the new against our internal libraries. We make initial judgments of safe and dangerous, good or bad, familiar or stranger with split second matching.

"Vessels and shells" explores the pattern recognition of the human form, no matter how abstract or distorted, Clay is a proper vehicle for exploring the vessel we know as the human body. Instead of pots or mugs or vases, I choose to express the human form as a vessel and fragments as shells.