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Dubhe Carreño Gallery Contemporary Ceramic Art |
Tom Hoffman
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Artist’s Statement
Objects of great beauty and use have always been part of daily life. Pots that have been brought into our homes add pleasure to our sense of place. Handmade objects for use symbolize a need and an endurance of pleasure in the face of time. The continuing significance of accessibility in using and viewing pots reassert a basic human need. My fascination with clay as a medium for personal expression has grown out of a deep appreciation of historical pottery. I find inspiration in knowing that many historical pots were not intended to be placed in museums and that the common language they share is one of beauty. While my pots can be homage to traditions past and present that come out of China, Japan, and Korea, I attempt to combine my understanding of these cultures with my experiences as a potter today. An awareness of the past is critical to understanding and distilling the historical presence of my work. Drawing on the event and the occasion of gathering together, I envision my work as an enabler setting the stage. My pots signify a particular point of view, informed by making and revealed over time through use and contemplation. They are loci that refer to my experiences and others’, recalling a space expanding a visual language.
Within the context of the historical pot my inquiry engages in the compression of time. I am interested in a phenomenon (memory) that simultaneously exists and does not exist; time and the crystallization of a moment or a series of moments. The parameters of that moment are then defined by compositional arrangements of clay within the walls of the pot. I often ask myself what the distillation of a day or a week would look like in the shape of a moment. Sight can inform our understanding of touch and touch can reciprocate our understanding of sight. Empirically we experience the physical world through the stimulation of our senses. In one sense, perception is aided by the senses. Empirical experiences enter into our memory bank as sensuous encounters that upon retrieval exist in recollection of an actual event. They are memories of real respondents of real tangible things. It is within this interlude between sensory experience and cognitive discourse that I try to site my work. Playing on the existence of natural phenomena experienced by the senses I project onto those, constructions of beauty, order, embellishment, and the theatrical. My work exists as an object or group of objects that through visual and tactile stimulation are interconnected to cognitive experiences. By deconstructing the object, my hope is to address the stage of cognitive discourse that has yet to become meaning or that which has little conceptual meaning. Thus, what is addressed is the stage of sensation which precedes that of rational comprehension---primordial evocation of response.
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