THE TEA BOWL 2019 I am exploring a contrary and ancient aesthetic wishing to return to my Japanese roots of wood fired pottery,to pursue an unadorned aesthetic which has always held me. The Japanese tea bowl is unique, historically linked to Zen Buddhism, Haiku and the samurai since the 15th century ; directness austerity humility nature, beauty in imperfections. the ritual experience to whisk and drink tea would be most significant when it is almost silent and inconsequential. such is the modest role of this simplistic functional bowl. to elicit an aesthetic realization of the transitory nature of life itself… originally perhaps an ordinary rice bowl utilized by a lowly Korean peasant farmer who would also make pottery during the dormant winter months. Where is the realization of beauty to be found in a crude unrefined ordinary rice food bowl? I want to create a tea bowl that elicits an austere beauty in subtle complexity, perhaps by imagining the geologic formation of the Canadian Shield, through heat and pressure, the shifting of tectonic plates, the primordial forces of nature erosion landscape of earth air fire and ashes, the charred variegated deposits glazing the surface of fired clay, unadorned and faulted, a functional vessel of emotional content existing amongst the imperfections of life’s desires and expectations.

THE TEA BOWL2019

I am exploring a contrary and ancient aesthetic wishing to return to my Japanese roots of wood fired pottery,to pursue an unadorned aesthetic which has always held me.

The Japanese tea bowl is unique, historically linked to Zen Buddhism, Haiku and the samurai since the 15th century ; directness austerity humility nature, beauty in imperfections. the ritual experience to whisk and drink tea would be most significant when it is almost silent and inconsequential. such is the modest role of this simplistic functional bowl. to elicit an aesthetic realization of the transitory nature of life itself… originally perhaps an ordinary rice bowl utilized by a lowly Korean peasant farmer who would also make pottery during the dormant winter months. Where is the realization of beauty to be found in a crude unrefined ordinary rice food bowl?

I want to create a tea bowl that elicits an austere beauty in subtle complexity, perhaps by imagining the geologic formation of the Canadian Shield, through heat and pressure, the shifting of tectonic plates, the primordial forces of nature erosion landscape of earth air fire and ashes, the charred variegated deposits glazing the surface of fired clay, unadorned and faulted, a functional vessel of emotional content existing amongst the imperfections of life’s desires and expectations.