Ceramic Heads

New Heads

Having an opportunity to explore facial expressions has me mesmerized by working on ‘just heads’. They can be the pinch pot size – based on the size of my hand, or just faces of that size – to really small ones – based on the size of my thumb. Pushing, pulling, adding, and
subtracting until the character reveals itself – hopefully personality and all. I’ve done series of heads: Sensate creatures all seemed to arrive from the woods, where they needed to be cautious, were startled, and needed to sense their surroundings. Others have been more
individually conceived from concepts to very abstracted characters.

Just as any of my clay work – they are fired twice, the second with an oxide-stain to emphasize their features, textures, and details, a third firing could be involved if a glaze would be necessary. After-fire techniques vary and combine from using gouache to paint, caran d’ache (French crayon), Prisma-color pencils, metallic wax patinas. Whatever makes them be themselves. They either hang on the wall independently or are mounted on a stained or decorated substrate.

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