When I work I dance with porcelain similiar to an idea captured by Larry Shiner in The Fate of Craft “as a dialogue of discovery with the material.” Porcelain is primary clay formed in situ, under extreme pressure. It is white non-elastic clay not polluted by man’s industrialization of earth. Clay is a material that represents geological time. Material science classifies clay as one of four primary materials on Earth. It invokes a broad spectrum of historical references, cultural constructs of mastery, ritual, status, trade, and technical innovations. Marks in clay tablets represent man’s earliest written records. Cliff dwellers and indigenous people made clay vessels permanent through the transformative power of fire.

Curiously sensual, porcelain reveals the status of the maker’s mind-body connection. Through the gesture of my hands and an empty mind I embrace the axiom “to err is human.” An intention that is visible in the final work as a transformative still presence.

In alignment with Heidegger’s declaration that “tools form systems,” I use and make tools in a systematic inquiry between cultural influences and technical innovation. I formulated ‘Ultra 1234’, a mid temperature porcelain clay body that fires at thirty percent lower fuel consumption than other porcelains yet retains a white translucence associated with true porcelains.