Inspiration
What is inspiration?
Women with horse heads, coyote with breasts, conjoined giraffes: where do these extraordinary forms come from? Memory, mixed with dreams, some joy, some sorrow, always seasoned with wonder.
I remember tossing my mane, and galloping across the playground (age 6), remember all the toads wetting my little hands and then being fed to snakes (10), and the ceramic frog my father gave me "To my little ex-tadpole" (21). I remember the dream of being a biologist, the joy of babies, the grief of death. From tidewater Virginia, to mountains and swamps in Asia, to grass lands in Africa, I have waded, climbed and stalked.
When I came to Oregon, I stopped wandering, and began to make images in clay. Using fire to fix the vision, I am building an ark of my psyche which maybe expresses some common human experience.