Grief

So as you may or may not know, my dog passed away at the end of last year. He was basically everything to me, my whole life revolved around looking after him and I loved him so much. I'm still processing this immense loss and this sculpture is part of that grieving process. You may have seen in my stories some progress updates creating this. It used to stand more upright but has slumped quite a bit in the glaze firing. I always say that ceramics is such a collaboration between the artist and the medium- more so than other mediums I've worked with. I feel so seen and held by the elements at play here, I feel like the slump has added a lot of feeling to the work. Sure I could choose to look at it as an error- I should have made the slabs thicker and supported them better- but to me these surprises are part of the process. As Bob Ross says, 'happy accidents'. The text on the back is wax resist words from a poem I wrote about the loss of my familiar Baz, written in a script of my own design that paints English like Japanese calligraphy. Keane toast body with Chrysanthos black and white underglazes. Chrysanthos 'limestone' tears, Terraform studio 'jade green' bowl and Wheelhouse Studio 'shimmer' clear glaze. Recycled glass beads melted into the candle cup. Cone 10 oxidation firing.