Bird-head vessels

Sue and I have embarked on a major project that I think will take us the next three years. The working title at the moment is Clay and Light. We’re photographing and documenting her sculptures, and our idea is that eventually we’ll make a book that may one day end up in the hands of an as-yet unborn great grandchild. For this purpose she bought a light box which we’re learning to use with different auxiliary lights, backgrounds, and drops. Extra: a red animal about four inches long and two inches high, with one of Sue's California acrylic paintings in the background.

For twenty years, from about 1976 to 1996, Sue was a sculptor. She made masks, beads, spirit houses, animals, human heads, tiles, ritual objects, pipes, mobiles, human forms, and various kinds of vessels. She studied and practiced the techniques of indigenous Americans and Japanese who worked with clay. She had a few shows, sold a few pieces, but mostly she wanted to make things, not sell them. She made hundreds of forms, threw many away, broke the ones that didn’t please her. Now there are still a few hundred pieces of her work scattered around her house, hanging in her back yard, or heaped in boxes in the basement. I suggested we make photographs of all the work, and to my amazement, she agreed.

The taller of these two vessels is three inches high. The heads are stoppers that can be taken off. We have made a beginning.