Solo Show, The Dock Art Gallery, Carrick on Shannon 2010
This new work is the culmination of some year exploration of memories, and clay as a material.
Recently I have been exploring memories and markers in my life. I have been remembering moments that are past. Moments that are caught in the privacy of my own mind.
In this exploration my mind feels like a vessel, a pod, which contains these things. It’s an ever changing vessel. And I have been trying to capture in form all those many moments.
We are what we think. We are what we remember. We are what we meditate on. The mind is like a form that takes into itself the shape of a thought, yet it is not the thought.
The mind is like a vessel that continuously reforms itself, reshapes itself as each moment passes.
The pods or vessels I am making are like like the mind, as it changes it’s shape, in each new thought or moment or milestone in life.
And what is a vessel?
A vessel is a container. It can be opened or closed. And I have been absorbed by these cavities, these insubstantial vessels, where Being is caught for a moment.
I have been working in clay to make these things because there is nothing more obvious or basic or ancient as clay. And as the bible says, from dust we are, and to dust we will return.
But when the clay is fired, it is transformed, and becomes a vessel in which for a moment, Being is captured.