The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (with thanks to Alice Walker), 2021

Wood (stained and waxed), thinset mortar, raw Christiana clay from Brentwood, MD

A set of 2 nesting bowls. Dig a hole into the earth, pour in the mortar, and push the waxed wooden bowl in. Weigh it down until the mortar’s set. I thought I could omit the aggregate, but the mortar had other ideas. The cracks appeared the second day. With more time, I’d have made the piece again. Then I remembered I like cracks. In ceramics classes, you learn how to keep work from cracking. But cracking is the voice of the material. Material cohesion is maintained up to a point, and then the tension is released through a crack. My work got better when I realized I was interested in cracking, warping, shrinking… all the ways clay expresses its materiality…and that the best thing I could do was add my voice to the conversation. Thanks to Alice Walker for this title, from a powerful book of loss and what’s to be gained on the other side.
22.5” x 22.5” x 8”