Specimens 2023~April

Developed Extensions of Specimens Series

2023-captured

Moss, Raw Clay, Stoneware Ceramic, Dirt

Investigating life forms clawing at edges of framed technology and humanoid architecture.  Vitrified forms creating literal and figurative barriers, Bryopytha swimming and thriving in artificial valleys. 9 Months of uninteruppted growth, 20 seconds of video.

Put Your Back Into It

 

Put your back into it~

2023 clay extension

Terracotta, banding wheel, water, Samsung telephoto lense, plastic bag, vinyl table, sponge, wooden modelling tool, 2200K LED lightbulb, 7000k LED lightbulb, Grey Paper

Text/ure

 Texture uncoiled and unearthed~

Striations and sinews

Texture experiment using leather-hard Northcote Pottery terracotta

Tested tiles

 

Tested tiles baked and rested 

Blessed trials, failed but not wasted 

Little slithers of documented heat 

Vitrified and withered into a silicate treat 

A hard stoneware treacle 

Used by not just one, but used by many people

Snack size and and good to go 

Minds eye imagines what we will throw throw 

Images and lactations of dreamt glazed forms 

A ballet between the imaginations of the mind and the recipes of praised norms

One way ticket

 

The soul creaks through a frigid body.

Soft fires warm the feet of the human spirit.

Winter months floating on in with changing volumes of the self.

Tic tacs of potential, and hums of new beginnings.

Its four months till I fly out.

I can already feel the heat of a mediterranean and the bitterness of the north sea

It took 10 days to settle on the decision to move to Europe. Like orbiting planets aligning themselves in motion, after years of transitions events in my life have just sort of lined up. I'm going to fly into Europe in August. I will start with some backpacking and then try to settle down in some bitterly cold British town. It’s a thought I've always brewed in the back of my mind and I guess things have just come together to make this possible.

But hey, maybe I will be back in 2 months, maybe the coffee will be too shit or the weather too cold. 

But it is a one way ticket and I have a British Passport. 

I may stay, I may come back, I'll guess we'll just see how it goes...

Frozen moment

A trapped piece piece of atmosphere, a frozen moment in time 

Spheres of airs whomst prespence causes textures that are simply sublime 

Like a bursting can of lemonade paused in a moment 

The bubbles provide a striking visual component 

It's a reminder of the transient nature of glaze

While at high heats its the honey that drips down clays 

As the kiln soaks above a thousand degrees gases crawl out of oxide chains 

Its this chemical release, followed by cooling that causes glaze’s bubbling terrains 

In that frothing cauldron of the kilns heat,

Is where these crystallised forms are made complete 

If I could offer you a piece of advice

Its to release gases and ensnare in a prism of silicate ice 

Learn the processes ,put in the work and pay the price 

For while you might lose sleep and kilns shelves the results are more than just nice

They are stunning, gorgeous and deserve to be praised 

For when those shining orbs rain down into streams of glaze

We remain transfixed, we are left simply amazed.

In Praise of Shadows

A cross-shadow is the final vanish I apply to my sculptures. Flattened and preserved in segmented recordings, my works exist not just by clay occupying space but photons arranging themselves on the digital sensors I use to document. For while the depth of my perception allows me to see and understand the forms in front of me it’s quite different for you. You rely on the technology I use to record as it is the only portal that transports you to my studio. This technology demands light and lots of it. I’ve always loved the baroque contraposto appreciated in the work of painters such as Carrivagio. In order to bring out the shadows and mute the midtones I set my ISO as low as I can and my exposure for as long as I can. I place my light perpendicular to the recording device so the light slices across creating peaks and valleys where both highlights and shadows can reside. Low ISO, Long exposure Rate and Angled lighting; these are my tools I repeatedly turn to for the setups I use and the tones I seek. For when that light just hits right it gives me the finish I desperately seek, that last slice of a dark glimmer that allows matter and space to form in your mind. 

Poem for Tenmoku

 It is a delicious black ice crystallised glaze,

Named Tenmoku it has long been awarded rich praise

Both for its colour and for its the shine,

It has a history for a finish on which to sip and dine

Originally religious in nature the glazes strict definition has since changed and departed 

But in order to understand that journey have to retell the monastic tale of where it all started 

You are a Zen buddhist monk in the 13th century

You must venture to china, its pilgrimage to study, not a holiday for pleasantries 

As you cross stormy waters you are lashed with waves so that nothing will remain dry 

And across the plains you trek and the mountains you climb until you reach your monastic destination, a place revered as heaven's eye.

Up on those Fujian hills you learn the words that bring you closer to Nirvana 

You are taught of those who came before before you, you learn of the Bodhidharma

Join in and practice amongst the other monks drinking tea

Learn from the Chan Buddhist elders and set your thinking free

Store everything that you can take in on that high mountain 

So when you venture back you can release your wisdom like a pressurised fountain

You may not know it, but you pilgrimage will bring more than just faith across the Yellow Sea

It will bring a desire to Japan, a desire for the Tenmoku pots that housed your tea!

Potters and consumers will fall in love with that hematite sheen 

It’s such a striking finish it just requires to be seen!

As result of your return home there won’t just be more souls pursuing Nirvana,

But also Iron glazed tea bowls arriving freshly packaged in Japan’s many harbours

 

Confidence is key when you open up the well.

A new potter is a timid potter, it's the most immediate tell. 

Don’t dip your toes in only to jump out.

Don't spit and scream at the clay and please try not to shout.

You’re a ceramicist, a master of clay, commit to the action!

You are afterall a card carrying member of this clay bending faction. 

Have patience, have strength but most of all have conviction.

Don’t make a draft jump straight to the first edition,

You are making a pot, you aren’t pencilling fiction. 

Find the centre of the clay to commit with your thumbs.

Like a cyclone the centre of the clay is where the waves feel calm. 

Push down while you open up

Maybe clean your wheel head and tidy up the muck. 

Take your time but don't take away your courage, 

Because a potter that acts with boldness is a potter that will flourish. 

 Eyes closed and gunning for it with this one. 

Sometimes it's too easy to over perfect a work, too easy to lose the details while looking at the full picture. Too often I find my work over sculpted and over finalised. 

A good writing exercise is to write something you can barely remember. To explore a work through muted tones rather than just vivid ones. Sculpting this work is an equivalent exercise for me. To create a work exclusively through a sense of touch allows for looser ideas to be preserved. This process has provided me a way to explore amorphous realms of thought. These forms are closer to sketches than casts of finalised works. Sightless work revealing fresh perspectives and novel manifestations.

Video recording found~

Rory Young (@roryyoungartist) • Instagram photos and videos

 Persona-fired clay

2023

video peice

Multiple muses of the psychye captured frantically on film.

Form and figures collapse and emerge from the same mass of clay.

Material and energy not destroyed by merely transformed.

Recorded creation found ---

Rory Young (@roryyoungartist) • Instagram photos and videos

Nothing quite stains like Cobalt Blue 

For when colouring indigo the choices are too few 

Maybe I could choose copper in a alkaline glaze 

But I'm after a deep navy not a turquoise haze!

Cobalt forms with silica to produce the deepest of blues 

Overabundant in a glaze it may clump into purple hues 

It has been a telling feature of porcelain pots of the ming dynasty 

And has lined walls of the Persian Mosques,temples displaying piety

Seeking its use we have been driven to dig deep within the Earth 

And so for its value, violence and exploitation has given birth 

A mineral mined today not just for its glamour 

But instead to sell as a commodity under an auctioneer's hammer

It has graced the ceiling of Shahs 

And glossed the Fabergé eggs of Russian Tsars

But today, it is used instead to replace the batteries of the IPhone XR’s

On the mining communities the price of Cobalt has long since been inflicted

A story of bleeding lungs and glistening jewellery that is the story that Cobalt has depicted.

Grain

Every piece of clay has its own grain. Its own directions in which its subsections twist and contort. Clay is built of microscopic tile structures 200 times smaller than the width of a human hair. The texture of clay is felt in the way these flat clay-tiles are stacked. Ceramicists harbour the godly power to change the directions these particles align themselves to. 

Unlike stonemasons whose practice involves finding a grain of raw material and working around it, a wheel thrower can alter the raw material itself. The power of the pottery-wheel comes from its ability to steer the grain of any given clay body. 

I like to imagine when I first remove a piece of unwedged clay from a bag, how the mess of particles first align themselves. Configurations of particles initially point to every position in the universe,utter chaos distilled into a lump. We feel that turmoil as a kick but slowly through practice and process we pull this clay into a smooth form, spiralling its grain in on itself. From a tangled webb of flat crystals to a smooth structure lined up like a brick wall we find the forms we wish to create. From chaos to peace, a lump of clay aligns into a thrown pot.

Maybe that's why I return to the humm of the wheel for peace. For through the process of transforming disorder into order maybe too I transform my own thoughts. Between hands draped in slip and pots slowly drying in these moments I find myself truly centred. 

Pride

2023 ~revise~

My long outstretched arms softly wrap his body, the night has slowed down, the conversation flickering like the candles in my room. We talk through the usual third date convos, what I want to do, where he wants to be, how we plan to readjust ourselves.

"Fuck it” he says revising the pace of conversation.“we are queer you know.. we can do anything!" 

"Some people say we shouldn't exist… and yet here we are" I say, squeezing tighter.

This work has come to mean a lot of things for me. Reflecting light in its silica coating and meaning in its temporal form, my interpretation of this ceramic shard has transformed as my sense of self has shifted. Multiple descriptions of this work may have been re-written but one thing has always stuck; the title, Pride. 

Pride is considered dangerous by the gilded hands of the clergy. For without shame and guilt how could these custodians retain their power. In accepting one's full character and embracing ourselves we can retrieve this very power, long since sequestered by these traditionalists. 

Between a cappuccino, one sugar and a flat white I express this to my friend. 

"I've never felt more masculine than while sucking dick" I quip.

A laugh, a small inhalation of coffee and a cough emerge from the other side of the table. A punchline only hitting the mark both for its gratuitous shock value as well as its play with the presumptions engrained by a conservative society. To accept how you can appreciate yourself is what pride means. To not fall into pits of thoughts created by others but to find your own definitions of what fits you, that's what pride means. You do you, they used to say, well now I'm finally doing me. 

I am finally accepting and participating in the pansexual connections that I have held myself back from, I am finally disposing of that poisonous sewer of catholic guilt, I am finally detaching myself from those toxic presuppositions of masculinity. From the way I hold my head, to the playfulness I present myself, to the shit I no longer put up with, I can finally say I am proud of myself. 

Happy Madi Gras,

Your clay clad queer signing out,

Rory xx

 

La Niña (2022)

On the 12th of September 2022 the Bureau of Meteorology declared that Australia was heading towards it's 3rd consecutive La Niña event.

In coming months Eastern Australia would continue to see itself swept up in prolonged flooding.

With tens of thousands of homes flooded and dozens of lives lost,

low-lying communities continue to bear the brunt of human induced climate change

These recordings are an account of the events that lead to the wettest Victorian month on record

A record no one can say how long will last…

Video link via

Rory Young (@roryyoungartist) • Instagram photos and videos

Digging

 A labyrinth to tunnel, a pit to bore,

Caverns to devour and catacombs to explore,

Fine jewels and finer clays lay still in their tombs,

A prize just too ripe for the picking we leave a scenery acast in wound

Voids in the lands plunge towards prizes considered grand

Before us a constructed landscape we seek to command, 

Our structures are hands reaching towards that rubble,

Grabbing the shovel we cast our own problems into dirt born troubles,

Return to that gold seam glow,

For when we are consumed by the earth we will realise the heavens are below. 

Video accessible via... 

Rory Young on Instagram: “DIGGING  A labyrinth to tunnel, a pit to bore, Caverns to devour and catacombs to explore, Fine jewels and finer clays lay still in their…”

 Library Of Moments -tiled catalougue

Reflection of Instagram archive 

For a year I have delegated myself the task of collecting, editing and posting daily stories. During the 365 moments of digital release my brain has adjusted. Thinking through the frames and software that facilitates digital recording my perspective of the world has become forever shifted. Like clay tools next to my wheel the settings on my camera have become instruments for me to adjust the flavours of my artistic expression. A tool integrated into one's practice is reflected not by the settings of the recording device but by the change of how the artist imagines they can capture the world. A telephoto lens may flatten the landscape drawing parallels in the audience's eye, while a well timed pan can change the tone like Tchaikovsky setting off a cannon in the orchestra pit. All these are tools that can afford new visions to the creator.

Tools will change the qualities within an artwork. The artist, by virtue of using those very tools will in turn change the qualities of their own psyche. After a year of dedicated practice I look at my surrounding environment differently. My eyes don't just see colour and light but stories and motifs, all laid bare and all ripe for the recording!

For a year I have pushed myself to create a catalogue of footage, as of today it's three and a half thousand videos in size. As I sit I am swamped in by this backlog of recordings. Inaccessible information is exactly that; inaccessible. It's only through sequencing and archiving that a library comes to life. I need to stop, collect, archive and edit beyond the 365 snack-size pieces I have already produced. That's why I am stopping my daily stories so I can spend the time necessary to work out my own dewey decimal system for the behemoth of data saved to my hard drives. 

Whether it's the silica crystals in the clay I throw or the silica chips that record my footage my eyes will forever look to what can be captured in my artistic expression. I do not know what the next 365 days will bring to my practice, only that I know I will have more instruments and ideas at my disposal than I have today.

Crude Covered Cheques

 

In the flesh, to be right amongst it, skin to skin, person to person.

Humans molding themselves like wet clay.

Forms excavating and expiring within their own salty perspiration. 

Synapses linking up and creating new pathways to connect the inner to the outer.

In that moment an instance of true queer self-expression.

To unleash the feelings of the self-there must first be a welcoming environment. 

A safe space that allows for the parties to participate,

without judgement and without stigmatization,

without bigots and without money.

Current events have revealed that when choosing between a safe space and a crude-covered cheque people choose the cheque. It's estimated that more than a billion people will see the world cup.  When symbols are seen and discussed by 1/8th of the world's population representation really does matter. How the world cup is unfolding is a reminder of the sharp barnacles often wrapped around LGBTQ+ communities. For as the goals are scored, yellow cards are handed out and a nation's sporting history is made, a simple armband consisting of six colours will not be allowed on pitch. Symbols of pride are too much for event organizers, for it is the shadows where the status quo wants us to stay, for their cheques and for their sponsors. 

Buy Coca Cola, Eat McDonalds and Fly Qatari but don’t you dare be true to yourself.  Stay out of the limelight, don't stand in the way of incoming lines of credit, don't rock the boat and keep this petrochemical cash cow flowing for everyone involved. It’s not values that keep corporate entities and governments afloat, its money, so keep your eye on the game and brain off any form of critical thinking. Open your nostrils and huff on the Qatari Gas field like it's an open bottle of Amyl. Forget who you love, instead remember what you love ($). For when the halftime rolls around some souls may have been crushed but at least a fortune would have been made.

MAD (2022)

I don't know why I have news notifications enabled on my phone. It's never uplifting, it's always some headline that helps to ensure I won't be falling back to sleep. Whether it's from the BBC or the Associated Press there is always a highlighted notification that consistently leaves one yearning for a xanax. For me the article that transformed my drowsy state of being into the anxiety driven mode of flight or flight was a simple headline; “Poland: Russian-made missile fell on our country, killing 2 “.





Maybe it's not the eye grabbing headline like Ukranian forces seize Kherson or Donald Trump announces his 2024 presidential run but tucked behind those lines is an apocalyptic danger fueled by cold war protocols. For as much as I am living my own contemporaneous 21st century lifestyle I am still bound by wider frameworks of dead militaristic power brokers.



NATO still adheres to the doctrines of collective defence, a multilateral framework that sees an attack on the individual member states as an attack on the whole. A deterrence so catastrophic that it relies on parties to fear it in order never to partake in it. Since the 60s theories of mutually assured destruction (MAD) have been underscored by logical mathematical principles. Nobel Prize winner John Nash would speak of stable equilibriums only emerging from the unceasing threats of violence. It's often touted that MAD helped us get through the 2nd half of the 20th century.



But to recall nuclear weapons and defence treaties as reasons for the “peace” of the cold war is to ignore the near misses. The near misses of 1961, 1962, 1968 ,1969, 1973, 1979, 1980, 1983 and 1995 all paint an unsettling picture. For when the theories leave the chalkboard and slam at high speed with Realpolitik we begin to see how our nightmares fuel 3rd party conflicts. For while the nuclear superpowers have (so far) deterred each other from a direct conflict, the more they built their nuclear arsenals the more they had engaged in proxy wars against each other. They call it the Stability–instability paradox; a title that along with MAD reveals the logical insanity we continue to participate in today.





The actions of Putin scare me, he is a tyrant running on his fumes of political currency. A man who would preach how dangerous a rat would be once it was cornered has now fallen into the same quagmires he lamented the west for. He is a brutish bully, an egomaniac trying to recapture the fantastical idealisation of Peter the Great all the while unleashing wrath upon his people and Ukraine. He is failing and he is desperate, a man not to be trusted and a dictator to be abhorred.



I am also scared by the response of NATO. Inflexible doctrines following logical protocols have come up against flexible battlefields and unhinged leadership. They say, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”, it is both the plans and protocols I fear as much as the soldiers and battalions.



Let us pray and let us hope that we can imagine ourselves beyond the structures of the cold war. Beyond the game theories and the human-born cynicism that continues to stock our nuclear arsenals. Let us hope the weight of escalation never reaches a critical mass for that is a news notification I never want to wake up to.

Weapons of Mass Politicisation

We might well be on the brink of an election breaking out. A once in a decade crisis that has seen the pollies wielding national security like a horse whip on Derby day. Day after day the Duttons and Morrisons have been immersing themselves in the backgrounds of military infrastructure. Flying in and flying out, the machinery of wrath has become a backdrop for politically divisive interviews. It's an opportunistic strike of political optics. An aesthetic backed wedge designed to paint an image of a weak opposition and a strong leader, with strong armed tactics.

Nuclear powered submarines, uranium armoured tanks, supersonic cruise missiles and high-calibre anti- personnel rounds have all become part of the iconography of armed warfare. Objects desired as much for their utility as for their optics. A tool to kill enemies of the state and enemies in the cross bench. Like the fine-china sets we keep on high, they are artefacts kept locked on display . Porcelain cups we don't dare drink from, swords we don’t dare unsheath and trinkets kept only for special occasions and Special Operations. The weapons we keep on the mantelpiece have become the props of our present day political pantomime. Props that we dare not use but props we must keep on display. It’s an ornamental deterrence fueled by boots on the ground and bombs in the air. An ideologically based mud-slinging race to the bottom of the election cycle barrel.


The machines of war have become shallow political tools for shadowy figures. Something to keep locked away in a hardwood cabinet only to be trotted out when the media comes for lunch. Something to exude hard power and further political means. Something that might well win them the next federal election.

 

Nooks and crannies,
Bones and flesh,
Muscles and fibres,
Skeletal frames and bloody membranes,
Thick blades and smooth clays,
Thumb prints and studio dints,
A bombastic, megaplastic blob of dirt,
Igneous rocks irradiated in an incandescent kiln,
Flesh made real,
Clay made ceramic,
Silicate sheets fired into Sapien forms,
From the dust of the ground, 
And with the breath of life,
A piece of earth becomes a living soul.

Pride (2021)

Take pride in your idol worship. Have faith in the clay, its ripples of silica, it's blocks of alumina.

 Praise be to the earth for its emerging forms. Worship your figures, worship your forms. 

Give them life with each veneration. It's the dedication to dwell on your own finger's creations that make a good piece of art great.

Let us sinfully indulge in the clay pits of earthly delights. 

It’s the dirt that we must cherish, for its bite and for its flow.

Venerate each mound of clay like it's Mother Mary. 

Kiss your terracotta beads and sing the clay’s prayer.

Devote yourself and say your vows,

not to the heavens above but to that sticky mud below. 

 

Sticky mud

Warm like skin and soft like toffee,

Easy to pull but hard to crack,

A pliable piece of parchment for us to play,

A memorable medium for us to mark meaning,

These silica sheets will sculpt your soft synapses.

They will lick to your knuckles and cling to your hair,

They will make your hands soft and your wrists sore,

Drawing you in as you open up,

Feel the matter enter your bloodstream,

Feel it pulse in your being.

Raw clay claws at the ripest thoughts and

Muddled concepts become draped in puddles of mud,

Creating ceramic forms we imagine cerebral figures,

We let the material become vitrified in the voices of our minds, 

To define yourself as a ceramicist is to let clay define you, 

To let clay give form to us as we have given form to it. 

I'm a material-based artist, which means first and foremost I pay attention to the material. It’s a kind of consideration that just comes with the job. When I’m approaching a new project my first thought is always, what will the clay do? How will the ideas I have in my psyche manifest in material forms? I’ve always got one corner of my mind’s eye on clay, I’m always immersed in this sticky medium, whether through thought, through performance, or through video work I’m trying to pay attention to the clay. Leaning in and focusing on the material I can feel my own humanity reaching out to this sticky substance. It is not surprising that the Latin word attention means to stretch towards. Let’s stretch towards our material roots our soil caked- foundations let us stretch and immerse ourselves in the material realm that we exist. Let's draw ourselves in the landscape whose material properties guide us, and experiential phenomenon moves us. Let’s get dirty, let’s get sticky, let’s get thick into the mud, for it's when we find ourselves saturated in materials agency and when our consciousness permeates material walls that we can connect to the interwoven nature of the universe. 

matter of principle

For millennia we have looked at geological processes as the acts of gods. Volcanoes that blocked out the sun for months, floods that swept away whole states, these actions of nature would be deemed so powerful they were actions of deities. We cast these deities with our own minds and within our image. 

Geology has always elevated materials for me. The natural processes of the planet are directed by the properties of the 98 elements that make up our world. To study geology is to study the power of materials, to appreciate it, to recognize the power of the geothermal engines below our feet and the currents of air above our heads. To recognize that this power does not extend from human-like deities but extends from matter itself, is to recognize the vitalism present within matter itself. 

We personify, we deify, but do we ever think to materialize?

Mark Makers

It’s revealing how when we most need to access our own thoughts we reach for materials. Materials have embedded themselves in our daily lives. They are a reliable foundation we have turned to to help us understand the world and understand ourselves. 

Materials have a memory, they are the archives for our conscious worlds, a matter-based data-base that we get to inscribe with our meanings and our emotions. It's through this storage that we can better access and understand our own thoughts. It's the metric of material externalisation that helps us get some clarity in our conscious life, think Diaries, think libraries;. 

Whether it's Hammurabi's code scratched into thick clay or the London stock exchange digitised onto glass rimmed magnetic disks, we have always trusted material to hold our most “valuable” thoughts. Hammurabi's code only became palpable when his clay tablets became ceramic. Only once there was permanence in the physical form of his clay tablets would there be permanence in the laws of his kingdom. A mark that remains is a thought that remains. The presence of the people who first smudge clay-baked plains may be gone, but their smudges aren’t. 

To make a mark is human. To make a mark for another, that is humanity. 

Go smudge some clay, go paint a canvas because it's when we reach for the material that we reach for one another. 

We reach to make.

We reach to reflect.

We reach to share. 

Cunieform (2021)

-raw clay

Over it

I’m done with being mad. I’m over being disappointed. I’m over making plans and overdue on my Library books. Back into our own forts to binge over-watched streams and repost overdone memes. Back to listening to the half-truths and half-baked apologies. Back to the blame game by different names. Back to the dilly-dallying the lollygagging fuckall coming from Canberra.  A national government with no national leadership. A bunch of slug sucking, meatloaves in dollar store suits. All for the announcement, all for the photo op, all for everything except anything of actual value.

For 127 days Scotty twiddled his thumbs while workers went out of pocket for snap lockdowns. Four months from the end of job keeper till Scotty clicked that people might need federal assistance from day one of a lockdown. It’s all fine for Scotty though during that time he got paid $ 191,108. You didn’t work for 7 days, Oh well bad luck; Scotty does fuckall, give the man of fat wad of Melba’s! Oh, but he deserves it, it must be hard to have your boots licked while your dragging your feet.

 

Australia has done better than a lot of countries in dealing with Covid, that’s true. But there’s a difference between has and is, between Australia and the Federal Government. Treating Hotel quarantine like a hot potato and penny-pinching vaccine orders has shown this Prime minister for what he is; The Engadine Midas, everything he touches turns to shit.



This stuffed suit in his ivory lodge better stop taking other’s credit, better stop passing the buck, better stop kicking the can because when the rubber meets the road, we will all spin out on Scotty’s old soup cans. I can already feel the wheels starting to lose traction, I can feel the driver course-correcting while oversteering. Rest assured that when it comes to a stop, Scotty will be there to take credit for the car not bursting into flames. I can already hear the press conferences; I can already see the handshakes. I don’t think I’m over being angry.  I think I’m just more tired than I was before. I think I’m just over it. 

Empire of Dirt

Clay is the skeletal structure of our cities. An initial foundation laid long ago on the heads of kings and at the hands of potters. To enjoy the fruits of the metropolis is to bask in the properties of clay.

As anyone who has tried to line a bathroom knows, water is a top-tier escape artist. Always finding the cracks in the floor, water is eternally striving to reach lower ground. To have a vessel that can hold water and to hold it well, in today’s plastic and metal-clad society, is an underappreciated thing.

Fired terracotta pots have long been used to control water. From buckets for carrying, to cups for drinking the oldest pots used fired terracotta to keep liquids at bay. These permeable pots were made watertight by allowing milk to settle in their porous holes. As the fats became rancid, they clogged up the pot like fryer grease clogging skin pores. Suddenly with these vessels at hand water could be transported, it could be stored, and with that cities spread further and further from the wells and riverbanks they depended on. Clay allowed cities to grow. It lined the ovens for the first bakers of bread and formed the tablets where words first became etched. Emerging from clay-laden flood plains cities expanded and expanded.

For the Ancient High Priests of the Tigress and the Euphrates when it came to making their idols only the finest clay would do. This dirt was not dirt cheap. Finer clays used for religious ceremonies would cost you a pretty penny, often in the form of silver, gold and lapiz. These expenses weren’t paid to a merchant, they were instead paid directly into pits from where they were extracted. Seeing a priest chuck a handful of rare metals into a pit of slick, sticky mud would today seem insane but back then it seemed like a fair bargain. In return for glistening metals the Earth gave you a material like no other. The ultimate vessel, a material that can hold water and heat, as well as it can hold language and belief. The early templates for our metropolises emerged as clay forms that since have been refined and sculpted into the landscapes we know today.

When I think of reverence for clay, I think of the imagery from one stone tablet exhumed from an ancient Babylonian temple. This tablet shows King Ashurbanipal, holding a basket above his crown. Pointing towards the heavens this basket housed something more valuable than gold or lapiz, it housed the literally foundations for his Empire. Even a man once called the King of the World, had to pay tribute to the divine material that is clay. For without clay how could breadmakers feed the masses, scribes write their epics, priests make their idols or potters make their pots. How could a King like Ashurbanipal rule with an iron fist without his Empire of dirt?

Simple answer, he couldn’t. 

A blue that pops

This test tile pictured here is nothing special. No pigments, no wild fluxes; just feldspars and silicates. Why then, with the most basic of materials, with the complete lack of colorants, we find a blush of blue? 

Within the animal kingdom blue is a rarity. Even the bluest of blue whales is still technically grey. To be blue is to stand out of the pack. Only one animal species produces a “true” blue pigment; the rest, they have to come up with other means. 

Morhpo didius has a blue that sings. A blue that tickles the cones of your eyes finer than any gold jewelry. A colour made afresh from each new angle. This neotropical butterfly seeks to clothes itself in the very finest of ultramarines. Each angle of this butterfly's wings cuts through with new unique hues. It is a display that glimmers with a vibrancy that we can't help but envy. It is here we will find the answer to our bubbles of blue glaze. 

Zoomed  in we no longer see the wing as a homogeneous plane but a tiled tessellation of tiny scales. Like minute crinkle-cut chips stacked against each-other, each scale is covered with microscopic ribbed plates. 

The wavelength of blue light has an interval of 450-495 nanometers. Morpho Didius' layers are spaced between these exact dimensions. When light rays hit the wing the rays bounce around in the corrugated valleys only to be shone back at us with a new blue look. The size of these voids dictates the hue like the length of a piano wire dictates the note. 

A colloid is a medium filled with a finely suspended materials. In the case
of this glaze it is a colloid filled with finely dispersed bubbles of gas. Sulfates, fluorides, chlorides and carbonates love to froth at high temperatures. If the glaze is thick enough at the right heat, it will capture and store these globules of gas. Looking at these blue blooms of glaze I know there are microscopic bubbles too small for me to see individually, but just the right size for me to see a blue iridescent glow. These bubble's dimensions directly correspond to the size of Morhpo didius' scales and thus produce the same effect. Iridescent blues will always be my favourite; Empty voids the exact right size for light to bounce back with a blue pop. 

The feathers of a peacock and the shine of an oil spill will always draw me in. Iridescents are so intriguing, they make you want to view every angle, see each new vibration of colour, appreciate each new shade of blue. In these petrified bubbles there is a void for light to dance at the right tempo. They show you how beautiful an empty space can be. The harmony of electromagnetic frequencies and echoes of empty space is what draws me into the void, that empty space constantly being filled with a blue aura. 

Idols

“You Shall Not Make for Yourself an Idol” (Exodus 20:4)

Worship your figures, worship your forms. Give them life with each veneration. It's the dedication to dwell on your own finger's creations that make a good piece of art great. Have faith in the clay, its ripples of silica, it's blocks of alumina.  It's good for the art and for you. Praise be to the clay and its maker. 

 I remember sitting there in those pews, my legs too short so as to wave above the carpet. I remember hearing the shall nots and the shall musts; Overviewing all of us, that oh so graven image. A man I never knew, from a place id never been, bleeding and dying like I could never know. It's what the eyes turned to naturally. A body so weak and a scene so violent it either added to images of torment or distracted from the scenes of miracles. That figure sticks to my mind like wet cardboard dipped in honey. 

I don't consider myself religious but seeing that figure at that Newport Chapel tickles a part of my brain nothing else can. A sculpture is never a solid form amassed of brass or marble but an empty vessel filled with our emotions and feelings. Images only speak 1000 words because we read into them so much. 

The bible forbids Idol worship because it knows we will do it, the impulse too strong, the reaction all too human. I've given into my natural impulses. The images I praise now are of my own making. I writhe in my own artistic ego like a pig writhing in it's own filth, gloriously. I venerate each mound of clay like its the Mother Mary. 

Hey wait a second! Its catholic guilt calling... he says he's with Moses, he's got some commandments he wants you to have a look at.

 You know what?! Fuck you Moses! I'm going to fuck the neighbors wife and steal his OX! I'm going to work on Sundays for double pay,  and every time I return to that blob of clay I'm going to make something I idolize.

“Their land is also full of idols; they worship work of their own hands,that which their own fingers have made”

Isaiah 2.8