Progeny Project.

date. 2023

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I am endlessly fascinated by the natural world and particularly inspired by sea creatures, succulents, fossils, and fractals. This collection of work was made for a joint exhibition called “Inside Out” at the Carnegie Gallery in Dundas, Ontario in May 2023. I explored the concepts of progeny, evolution, and diversity. Each piece is part of a lineage, which can be seen in the shared use of materials, colours, techniques, form, appendages, textures, and edges. However, the collection embodies a diversity of pieces that makes their shared descendancy less obvious.

Primordial is the “mother” of all pieces in the collection. It evolved after a friend shared an AI generated image from a Facebook group devoted to carnivorous plants. At the same time, I was intrigued by the idea of suspending my smaller pieces in water to take advantage of how it magnifies surfaces and distorts shapes. Suspended in water, the small pieces take on an otherworldly feeling and I believe Primordial pushes the boundaries of what ceramic art can be. The fundamental shapes, clays (white, red, and black stoneware clays) textures, and colours of the entire collection are represented in Primordial. The piece escaping from the top of the glass column is a nod to evolution and the transition to land-based creatures.