Family Gathering - Little Pete Meadow
A cupful of childhood memories backpacking in the Sierras. When I was 9 in '59 my father & mother put an old wooden pack frame on my back, hung a Sierra Club Cup on my rope belt and we “hit the trail”. I discovered the earth could sustain me as it is and I could survive in it with little more than a spoon, a cup, dried apples, jerky and the body warmth of family. And wow, it was hard work, but so worth it, not only because of the extraordinary beauty — we were experiencing our life source.
When the John Muir Trail reached Little Pete Meadow, we were gifted with Huckleberries~ one of our simple native delights that stirs us to defend what we stand on…! We mixed them with Bisquick making one giant blueberry biscuit over our campfire. My father actually carried a small cast-iron skillet for this purpose. Yes, crazy.
This cup is made entirely of clay into faux granite. The blueberry stems and handle are hand-worked wire. The plinth is an actual granite stone and is not attached. Vintage spoon.
As a native of California, the clay state, I love turning clay to stone.
My intention is to share work that stirs the visceral will to face our many challenges, with hope & joy, in the beauty that is in us and all other life. Beauty that is under our feet and setting sail at our backs.
Inspired by its no-waste complexity, nature is my source and my anchor, in wild places and at home in East Oakland. It can guide us, as artists and citizens, by its responses to our actions.
Clay has a memory. It records your fingerprints and all the ways you held it in your hands. Our earth has a memory and responds to our manipulations. My work in clay draws from the knowledge that everything…us, our food, home, clothes, tools, toys all come from the ‘clay’ of the earth and the hope that we will seek solutions in nature-based knowledge to grow, gather, love & consume leaving the smallest fingerprint.
I feel an urgency to conjure art in this revolutionary time and value clay’s infinite potential − mirroring our own.
When the John Muir Trail reached Little Pete Meadow, we were gifted with Huckleberries~ one of our simple native delights that stirs us to defend what we stand on…! We mixed them with Bisquick making one giant blueberry biscuit over our campfire. My father actually carried a small cast-iron skillet for this purpose. Yes, crazy.
This cup is made entirely of clay into faux granite. The blueberry stems and handle are hand-worked wire. The plinth is an actual granite stone and is not attached. Vintage spoon.
As a native of California, the clay state, I love turning clay to stone.
My intention is to share work that stirs the visceral will to face our many challenges, with hope & joy, in the beauty that is in us and all other life. Beauty that is under our feet and setting sail at our backs.
Inspired by its no-waste complexity, nature is my source and my anchor, in wild places and at home in East Oakland. It can guide us, as artists and citizens, by its responses to our actions.
Clay has a memory. It records your fingerprints and all the ways you held it in your hands. Our earth has a memory and responds to our manipulations. My work in clay draws from the knowledge that everything…us, our food, home, clothes, tools, toys all come from the ‘clay’ of the earth and the hope that we will seek solutions in nature-based knowledge to grow, gather, love & consume leaving the smallest fingerprint.
I feel an urgency to conjure art in this revolutionary time and value clay’s infinite potential − mirroring our own.