Dark Waters

The selection of pieces below were produced during an artist residency at the Lunenburg School of the Arts in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 2017. (Work marked with an asterisk is represented by Oeno Gallery including via Artsy and 1stdibs.)

Everyone has a sense that, globally, politically, we’re in a perfect storm. The sea has always been a great metaphor and my work attempts to reflect in a maritime way something of the present climate. I’m not primarily concerned with making policy statements about this or that subject as I am in the emotional undertow, and the need to hold out a hope that is higher than the high-water mark.

M. I. A. ’s Borders inspired my first sketches

*Dark Waters One: Glazed Ceramic: 25.4 × 20.3 × 45.7 cm

*Dark Waters One and Dark Waters Two

*Metropolis: Glazed Ceramic: 35.6 × 34.3 × 29.2 cm

*Metropolis: Detail

*Seas Four Meters Building to Six: Glazed Ceramic: 32 × 17.8 × 22.9 cm

Leviathan: Glazed Ceramic: 20x20x25cm

Tile maquette and Marianne — goddess of liberty: Glazed Ceramic: 32x18x24cm

“We’dom the key’dom to life!” raps M.I.A. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman makes the same point regarding so-called economic migrants and refugees: “We … need a language and critical vocabulary for a worldly condition that forces millions of its inhabitants to [be as such].” In my exhibition I included Marianne, the French republican figure, as a coda reminding us of the promise of liberté, égalité, fraternité: universal human citizenship.