Bio-Geometry Pieces

Our eyes constantly remind us that the created world is multi-patterned, organized geometrically. From pine cones and the seed heads of sunflowers, to frost crystals on a cold windowpane, we respond to these natural forms because they’re so familiar. In my bio-geometrical pieces, I emulate some of these patterns found in nature, setting up a diagonal path that follows the outside of the piece and leads to the top, to the interior. I cut through the wall of the pieces, pushing in and pulling out, then sealing the gaps created by bringing more clay to the inside. The patterns then become three dimensional tessellations, smaller or larger depending on where they fall on the vessel form.

In the Old Testament, the patriarch Jacob has a dream in which he see’s a bridge between heaven and earth, on which the angels walk up and down, connecting the material world and the heavenly sphere. “Jacob’s Ladder” has been a subject for artists ever since, including William Blake. In my “bio-geometrical” pieces, I use the patterns created to suggest a movement up to the top, to the inside, so it becomes for me a sort of “Jacob’s Ladder”. But this path is not just up to a supposed heaven above. It is a path to the inside, to an ineffable interior, a journey of consciousness rather than just a journey “up.”