This page details some of the making processes for my projects NATURE TO THE DOGS, She Who Vomited Out Her Own Metals, and The Collar and The Yoke. I am a huge believer in the creative commons and am happy to share recipes and my technical processes with others.
View of my studio at Alfred University. The ceramic sculptures in NATURE TO THE DOGS were made, in part, by applying a thick clay slip to organic matter and then burning that organic matter away. Materials such as roots and branches, bark, rope, string, and knitting served as molds.
I used a type of clay body called "plemp" for NATURE TO THE DOGS. Plemp has a very high grog and fiber content (paper pulp and flax fiber)--meaning it will shrink very little and will have higher green strength. I learned about plemp in Anton Rejnders' book, "The Ceramic Process."
Pieces were bisque fired separately. Sometimes, these ceramic husks would break down in the firing, creating mineral wood chips. The resultant fragments were reminiscent of gravel--an interesting, if unintentional, poetic nod to the products of mining and extraction.
Pieces were glazed and assembled in deep beds of sand. These pieces were ultimately glued together by the molten glass.
Because these sculptures were not fired on a hard, flat surface, once removed from the kiln, they often appeared to float just above the ground. As objects made from wood and ceramic minerals, they were, at once, profoundly of the earth, yet detached from it.
She Who Vomited Out Her Own Metals involved a lot of experimental processes. In this image, you can see that I began hanging steel bird cages from my studio ceiling and coating those cages in layers of ceramic material.
This book speaks more deeply to the poetics of extraction. In particular, Lippard connects rural gravel pits and mining cavities to their urban counterparts: the erection of buildings and infrastructure. These are inverse images, yet neither exists without the other.
This book has stretched my understanding of the breadth of ecological thought.
An excellent resource to better understand the history of mining in the Americas, and its environmental, social and political ramifications.
A meandering and thought-provoking book of ecocritical essays—beautiful, too.
This book provides a clear and powerful overview of major themes and issues in ecocritical discourse.
"This divinatory guide has its roots and veins in the lustrous earths and waters of the Tiny Mining community, a mineral exploration collective committed to the open source exploitation of the interior of the human body for rare earth resources." https://v2.nl/publications/becoming-geological
A kinetic theory of the Earth.