Body / Earth
bodies to hold / Transitions to embody / Landscapes to inhabit
Stoneware with wild clay inclusions from Abiquiu, NM
Anagama wood fired in Taos for 5 days in October + December 2024
Photos taken at Abiquiu Lake, Dec 2024
Body / Earth is made up of a grouping of solid ceramic shapes that are designed to be held and interacted with, alongside a larger basin which centers the work as a scaled up expression of one of the smaller forms. Each piece is made of a stoneware clay that has a small amount of Chinle formation clay from Abiquiu, which has a rich dark purple color. I gather the purple clay additive from land very close to the Chama River and Abiquiu Lake, where the photos are taken, and it is about 235 million years in the making. Its richness and color become most prominent by means of the reduction cooling done at the end of the firing, which in total is a 4-5 day process done in an anagama wood kiln in Taos. The process allows the flame and ash to create a surface that is completely unique to each piece and to that particular time and place of firing.
Because the forms represent universal shapes, geometries of change, and the morphology of matter — the scale is ultimately irrelevant. They could be infinitely scaled up or down and their forms still apply to the larger universal geometry. This is an idea that has fascinated me and captivated my art practice for as long as I can remember.
The pods are meant to be held in the held. The solidity of the form lends a feeling that the piece is a different kind of vessel – it doesn’t have space for physical things inside, but it can carry other things. Its feeling in the hand can make one feel safe and grounded. It can withdraw your attention from your hands and hold it, organize it, settle it. Use it to ground, to mediate, to fidget, to protect, to share, to go inward. It will hold the heat of your hands or your body, the heat of your being.
Each one is shaped from solid clay into forms that emerged organically from working the material in my hands. I had in mind images of a seed, seed pod, bean, womb, embryo, or egg - vessels of life and growth. Each form bled into the next until I had a whole grouping of hand-scale bodies that reflected (just a fraction of) the universal forms of growth, creation, and transition. They represent not the before or the after - but the process itself of change and transition. I find these to be grounding forms to hold and embody, as they can help me to feel grounded and at ease within the constantly changing yet cyclical nature of life. Their ability to remind me of these universal truths is protective in nature, as I am holding those truths in my palms, while being held by them in a larger sense.
The larger basin form, Pond as Vessel, represents the idea that the walls of a vessel which create a border between interior and exterior can also be thought of as liminal spaces which are neither one nor the other, but a space in which two materials or bodies meet, interact, and a boundary is perceived. The walls of earth that create the boundary of a body of water are not a distinct wall as we find in a pottery vessel - they are simultaneously and necessarily made up of both water and earth. The two materials meeting are what creates the space between, which is perceived as the boundary between the two, but is actually a completely unique and living space of interchange and blending.
Swipe through the gallery below to see a detail of each individual pod —
Body / Earth is currently showing and available for purchase at Lapis Room in Albuquerque, NM. 2025