Ceramic Sculptures

Refers to blackened Greek bronzes recovered from the sea and to the Underwood Deviled Ham character illustration.
Ceramic, paint, and plastic foliage. 14 x 13 x 7 inches

This is another example of a technique I call "wet on dry", that I want to do more of.
12 x 12 x 7 inches

I used a tree as a tool to express itself. This started as a 25 pound bag of clay that I skewered with a pvc pipe. I pressed and rolled this around the base of a large tree with deep gnarly bark. Then slammed it off the pipe onto one end to initiate a stumpy look, followed by detailing using pieces of tree bark.
12 x 9 x 9 inches

This is a "2 Face". One side is referenced to sleeping head by Brancusi.
10 x 7 x 5 inches

HMMM another 2 face. When I was a kid going down into a dark basement, or other spooky spot, I couldn't help worrying about monsters. To cope I imagined becoming friends with them. I told myself it made just as much sense for them to be unintentionally scary and upset about being misunderstood and fearing to be forever lonely. Even it they turned out to be awful, I could maybe confuse them by my behavior....or at least not feel so hopeless and fearful during my demise. By then I had turned on the light, grabbed the laundry and run back upstairs.
13.5 x 8 x 8 inches

Relates to the style of the first painting I remember making when I was five years old, a hand making a peace sign. I was also thinking of a peace poster from the 1960's. thinking about how sculptures of partial bodies are kind of like flowers, freshly cut to regard but why not add detail of the cut on the limb itself? Rapid scrap build approach.
8 x 7 x 6 inches

Removable head. If I ever get around to it, the idea is to have other heads as well.
8 x 5.5 x 4.5 inches

Improv. Used two firm slabs cut to a book-matched contour which I then joined using soft slabs to follow the contour. I pushed out the firm slab sides to create a figure expressing a full weight of female bodying, whether older with fibroids or young and pregnant. She is unbound and unworried. Dancing with closed eyes is a way of enjoying and celebrating the body one is. The calm almost smile and her self-enfolding arms express self recognition and acceptance. She embodies a celebration of being that I need as an antidote.
Terracotta and white slip. 11 x 10 x 6.5 inches

Another rapid scrap build start. I ask for scraps piling up by a neighbor and give myself 30 minutes or less to build fast. In this case just thinking "head". Then refining later. Intent was to give color with loose single swipes of underglaze, engobe, or acrylic wash, similar to brushwork on Picasso vases.
12 x 9 x 7 inches

I sometimes think of characters with physical conundrums which people should be able to relate to through their own body sensibility.
11.5 x 10 x 5 inches

Started as a 10 pound "pinch pot" and ended up as a gravitationally challenged clown cookie jar.
16 x 13.5 x 10 inches

Trying to find interesting balance between representation of hats and retaining identity as blobs of lumpy clay.
11 x 9 x 4 inches each

I was thinking about the once viral straw man fallacy, "guns don't kill people....yadda yadda", and trying to rephrase it in a way that would reset the assertion to make it representative of the actual social condition of concern. The mercy beseeching pose and expression of the tower/owl/man on the Keep tower relates to the central victim of the firing squad in Goya's painting, "Execution of the defenders of Madrid, the third of May, 1808." That was perhaps a first political protest painting in the western canon of art history. Madrid was also the first major city to experience aerial bombing of civilians, a precedent set by Franco and his fascist accomplices. Since then it has become a recurrent practice, spiting the notion of laws of war.
17.5 x 8 x 8 inches

Considering a theme to use for a doorstop, I asked myself, "What theory of cosmos could be expressed using a human body conundrum?" my answer was this guy who sticks his head outside (of the cosmos) through the wall. Instead of what he may have expected, his head emerges from his own butt and sees the room behind himself. He seems to be enjoying a sense of discovery. I also like cats. Susan hid this piece in the laundry room. I am endlessly amused with this kind of thing, but Susan finds it distasteful/embarrassing to guests.
8 x 6 x 5 inches.

This is a cat feeding toy. Put a treat in the middle and they love trying to get it out. I love the way I was able to use the grog in the clay to create something like a taste bud surface to the tongues.
10 x 10 x 4 inches

Wet-on-dry 2 face improvisation.
9 x 5 x 4 inches

Another 2 face improv "Creetchie".
8.5 x 4 x 4 inches

And yet another 2 face "Creetchie" improv. The blue side was a try at regression to make and paint as if a kindergartener again.
7.5 x 7 x 6 inches

Character from my Two Faced "Creetchies" series. This is an ongoing series of improvisational character creations in which each side is developed as a counterpoint to the other.
Terracotta with underglazes and stain. 6.5 x 5 x 4.5 inches

This was my very first 2 face "Creetchie" and it is wearing a sarong, which is inevitable given all the time I have spent in Indonesia.
11.5 x 6 x 5.5 inches

Yet yet another 2 face improv "Creetchie".
9 x 8 x 5 inches

Another physical conundrum sculpture.
9.5x 9 x7inches

The physical conundrum of being a figure on an Etruscan pot is that heading in one direction is the same as approaching from the opposite direction. This dude with a spear chases the enemy who is himself.
9.5 x 8.5 x 8.5 inches

A physical conundrum seen in the similarity between crucifixion pose and hug welcome pose. The duality of loving togetherness and isolated victimhood. Not exactly the right words, but very much a great example of physical comedy in service of moral philosophy.
Painted, like most of my sculpture. Cast from a mold. Can make multiples. 5.5 x 4.5 inches.

OK, you probably noticed, I like cats. Here is a followup to the fresh cut hand. A cat does not pick a flower up to regard it'; a cat grabs or steps on it.
8.5 x 7 x 4 inches