Viable Solutions

The studio door rolled up and space was cleared, long past time to see if the hands could really remember how to make this happen, and surprisingly, they did. It did take a break in sobriety to open the literal and metaphorical door. This is a decision that was (is) scary for me. I don’t want to return to a lifestyle of addiction. It did work though, and now that the door has been opened, I’m finding that I’m comfortable in the studio, even preferring to make my decisions sober. The reckless aspects of my decision making is being toned down. Toned down, but not absent. There’s still a value being placed on using inquisitive activity and calculated risk to move projects in directions that are unfamiliar.

The challenge this time around is to change without a monkey in the cockpit.
I’m 2 and a half years clean and sober and I want to see what I can do with that. Reliving the safety of past designs doesn’t possess the allure to keep me in the studio.

So this is the tip of the spear for this round of work. It’s a simple paper transfer process that resembles reverse glass painting, building up layers of underglaze and colored slip on newsprint and transferred to a leather hard clay surface. The process lends a flavor to the surface. The trailed lines are inherently loose and playful, and the surface has a peeled paint look and feel. There’s plenty of potential directions that this can (and will) be taken, but most importantly, I feel that it’s a working solution for bringing drawing to the surfaces that are being created.