BOAT URN
WALLPLATES
Un-Modular Modular
My work appropriates ideas from modern design to achieve completely different objectives. Like modular furniture the stacking bowls, wall plates and cup bus employ repeated independent parts that can be configured together in various quantities, to form a functional system. However, where modular interior design uses this system to make objects less specific and ultra efficient, my work uses it to make objects less efficient and ultra specific. By combining style and techniques of architecture and industrial interior design with those of a more intimate artistic practice this work explores new questions around the social value of physical things.
Wallplates are simple to use, inviting, elegant and, most importantly, inspire imagination both during and when not in use. Each of the sets can be ordered in any number and are interchangeable, so they fit the needs of the user. Like Shaker chairs hung on the wall to clear the floor for cleaning, a practical solution can also be a beautiful one that provides a reassuring sense of order.
By integrating dinnerware and its storage system, the object becomes part of life even when it’s not on the table with food. The process of removing it, eating from it, cleaning it and then returning it to its place is part of a cycle that emphasizes the relationship with the object, the occasion, and the community of people connected by it.
The dinnerware systems also suggest our relationship with home. Removed from its storage receptacle, the pot is portable and the place it nested bereft in its absence. When replaced, the feeling is a reassurance of returning home.
In spite of their inherent eccentricities, these pots are meant for use. They are easy to clean, fit well in their perch and beg to be handled. Through the impulse to use, then rethink use the objects initiate a relationship that elevates an everyday act into an occasion.
CUPBUS
Although the Cupbus isnt the easiest way to store and transport cups, it presents them in a way that makes their use more special, suggesting the connection between the objects and the people using them. My intention as a maker is that I can redistribute the importance of a useful object more evenly between efficiency and specialization, between practical and ritual. I am interested in how the physical “inconvenience’ of the cup bus, can initiate the attention that might elevate a routine act.
Our life is composed of little moments, often repeated, altered slightly, and repeated again. My work’s role is to nudge the user, whisper “pay attention”, then stand back so they can consummate these objects into their own personal practices.
MUGS
I use industrial processes such as slip casting to promote a notion of efficiency and usefulness. My interest is in the democracy industry offers for distributing quality useful things to a greater public while still being economically sustainable. Ideas of production and industry are emphasized as an honest reflection of utility and contemporary society.
Unlike industry, which attempts to erase all evidence of manufacture in the finished object, I highlight these moments of process like gesture in the handmade. In mass-production the goal is to control the product, and strive for uniformity. My work embraces imperfection while still using some of the language of industry. In this way the pots I make are attempting to combine opposing values harmoniously. My hope is that the contradictory values associated with these various processes live as questions within the work.
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