trim, polished micaceous ware with blue & white marbled slip •
While the two traditional ceramic techniques employed in trim are each inextricably linked, as techniques, to one of two places—micaceous ceramics linked to New Mexico & marbled ceramics linked to Provence—the effects portray both landscapes, one just as well as the other. trim highlights the contrast, sometimes alchemical, between the transcendental aspirations of the blue & white tradition with the immediacy of gilded mud. trim exploits a double standard, suggesting the simultaneous distinction & indeterminacy of the visceral & the cerebral. To substitute an expansive rhetorical interiority for a restricted physical interiority is to represent the infinite instead of presenting a finite space. The ceramics in trim draw it in from without, less than they present it from within. These are formed from slabs & coils of a mica-rich clay dug in northern New Mexico, then slipped & burnished before firing.
2019, LH Horton Jr. Gallery, San Joaquin Delta College, Stockton, CA
