bob's thoughts, images, feelings
and then some
This pot is as hard as rock. I take its structure to be somewhat ethereal because it just happened to come to be. It didn’t exist and then it did. I made it as this particular thing-form, with my manipulative hands immersed in clay on the potter’s wheel in my studio. It could have been…
A bowl is such a simple object: open, balanced, a spatially-structured circle, a foot, a lip, a receptacle. But to make a bowl is an adventure and a loving challenge. It is difficult to visualize labourers whose artistry is more immediately sensuous than that of potters shaping supple, moist and plastic clay as it spins…
In the current era, we contemporary humans consider ourselves fortunate to have a much richer and more realistic understanding of what things are, what reality is, and what the natural world is about, than any of our forebears. Most of this new and developed understanding is generally attributed to the development of science, scientific methodologies,…
metamorphosis: plastic molecules? From the rocky mountains clay has flowed—time beyond imagining, and when fired in the potters’ kilns, clay re-transforms to stone. Clay is occasionally called a hydrated alumino-silicate. Calm down, this will be brief and may actually be informative. To place these words into context one could say that clay is an earth…
Generally speaking, when human beings investigate something, looking for evidence, we accept that they are looking in the world which is more or less available to most people to look at, see and understand. Of course, by the 21st century, we know that in some of the sciences, in some medical domains, in some areas…
Water, Earth, Air, Fire: elements all In the beginning life was hidden. In the beginning life was latent. In the beginning it was possible but not yet actual. The waters are moving and giving energy in many forms, in many ways and in many directions —currents, trickles, ocean waves. Water is the earth’s primary gift…
intermodal hypertension
Although this section post appears as a review of making and imagining in clay and ceramic art, much of its underbelly is present in an array of creative activity and in our ordinary, regular lives just because we are human beings. It is difficult, if not beyond our capacity for understanding, to grasp the when/how/why…
natural/supernatural :: feet/gods There is no god: there is no spiritual hierarchy or spiritual apparatchiks, no minor gods, no angels, demons, devils, hell, or any of the other hidden ghost-like apparatus, usually invoked as regulating the affairs and consequences of human action. Incidentally, there is no heaven. None.There are no absolute values in nature, good…
One goal, many paths. If only the aphorism about many paths leading to mountain top, were as true as its popularity suggests. Perchance, if only it were as clear as its simplicity suggests. Perhaps, then, this — or any — life would surely be simpler and more manageable! As if our life were actually only…