HumptyDumptyRestored

 many years ago

sometimes during the early 80s

when i returned from my 8 year long journey

and started to seriously consider my ceramic direction

i had my first one man exhibition

in Adelaide

i sold a bowl to an organisation

who gave it as a prize for something or other

the prize went to India Flint's mother

the same India whom i am presently having 

an exhibition with at 

the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery

on the opening day of that event 

she brought me the same bowl in many pieces

 a possum the culprit

i took it home

and with great care and attention

put it back together again

i was able to restore the form

but compromised the surface

in order to make up for that i placed some gold 

in the fillings on the collar of the bowl

'The work will teach you how to do it'

showing off

my part of an exhibition at the  

murray bridge regional gallery, s.a.

titled:

How does your garden grow

From the moment, many years ago, when I first bought a piece of land, I have gardened. Vegetables, herbs and flowers. My latest garden in Victoria, is situated next to the forest. While gardening one day, I realised how the forest is the perfect garden. Self contained, it supports many species. Since that moment I have modeled my garden on the forest example. Observe. Leaving things alone mainly.

‘the exhibition of stillness’

When, during the mid-eighties, I returned home from 8 years of traveling, during which time my true education began, I set up a studio and started making ceramic bowls. The inspiration of these came from a meeting with an American Indian medicine man who, one night, took me outside and, while pointing at the first moon, a thin silver bowl filled with light, said: “We call that the receiver”. I found this a moving and poetic moment. I took it as my direction.

The bowl is a most satisfactory form to work with. From that beginning my bowls have gone through many changes. Always the same. Always different. Until this moment in time, where the bowls are the result of my many years of bowl making.

Then, while walking in the forest recently I watched a leaf slow-falling to the ground, I became aware of the silence of the trees. I found myself listening.

During my ongoing journey along the ceramic path, where each bowl represents a step, I found myself again in the forest and there, written amongst the trees, a message. This became my inspiration for this exhibition.

Using imprints from the forest floor, I have created aspects of that which speaks to us from our family of trees. Aspects such as ‘the nothing becoming the everything’, ‘the primal stillness’, ‘things not known but remembered’, plus ‘the total silence of decay….’

Everyone of my project starts with a return to the source. From there I find a new direction again and again. Something raw with something refined. And there lies the necessary tension in the work. The tension which gets the attention.

Advice i received: 'plant something every day'