Artist Statement

Through successful experimentation with different clay bodies and hand building techniques, I have allowed myself greater freedom in how I express myself through the manipulation of clay and further allowing the clay to keep its integrity.

For the last few years, I've been working on both sculptural and functional directions for my work bringing them together as a whole.  I work with the intention of creating an interaction of negative and positive space.  The object itself is broken into a collage of layers and textured lines created by the way the clay is formed.  In some cases, I used found objects such as a paddle or a stamp to texture the clay.  Hand manipulation is used to soften some lines or to take them out completely.  My objective is to avoid allowing the viewers an easy passage around the piece and make them deal with the segments which make up the whole.

I am searching for objects which are universal in nature.  This universal quality may be illustrated by observing a particular phenomenon.  When a two or three-year-old child is given a tool to mark with and something to record this mark on, they will always appear the same.  It makes little difference what walk of life or what culture they come from the children will show these marks with a sense of pride and accomplishment.  I think they assume we see the same thing they do.  It is from this point we try to make ourselves understood.

This is not to say that I wish to achieve what some would call primitive art, but rather to make objects that span the history of art forms in a contemporary sense. I do not want my work to be understood only by people of academia but also by people who can find a connection to my work which I term universal.  The universal is what I continue to strive toward. 

Wood firing, in my opinion, is the one thing that ties all of my work together into a successful cohesiveness. Wood firing and my work cannot be separated.

Gary Hootman