CERAMIC SKULL CASTS
2019-2023
Slip clay casts with glaze and screen-printed decals presented in two different installations.
The process I use to create these various animal skulls is slip-casting, where I make a mould of plaster from a real skull, then using this plaster mould I make clay copies of the skull, which then get fired and glazed and then fired again. Some of these clay copies are also decorated with screen-printed decals of imagery of tarot cards.
CERAMIC CATACOMB
2019
Ceramic Catacomb is presented as an installation piece of approximately twenty ceramic skulls coming out of a wall, similar to catacombs. This piece is about challenging people to face death - literally and metaphorically - and is in honour of the lives of all creatures.
This piece is influenced by the catacombs and caves filled with skulls to bury the dead during times of war and disease when there were too many deaths. The decals decorating the skulls are inspired by tarot cards and the Ñatitas of Bolivia, which are skulls found by the living and believed to provide wisdom.
NOTHING LASTS FOREVER
2023
Nothing Lasts Forever reminded me of me or the ultimate nothing lasting forever - life and death. Death is the end of our physical existence, but perhaps not the end of our soul. This work is a mixture of ceramic casts, real bones, nature, with written words that speak to this idea.
This piece explores how the dead are treated - especially recognising the forgotten and the disrespected dead, who are tossed away in an unmarked grave, muddled with other bones.
This is a celebration of the forgotten souls, in this intimate setting, with words in a paper scroll tied with string to twisting twig arch - some scrolls had poems, others have quotes from cemeteries, and the rest have names for the dead to give them identity - to them to show them they are loved and seen. The scrolls are an offering to - and in a way from - the dead - depending on how you see it. They are gravestones to remember the fallen and forgotten.