Dan Falby
I use play, chance, and a collaboration with gravity to create ceramics that are a visceral record of movement and materials colliding. I am drawn to how forms in nature tell the stories of their creation in the marks on their surfaces and the posture of their bodies. Erosion by wind and rain, freeze-thaw cycles, tectonic upheavals, and biological growth and decomposition create an intricate web of contingencies that shape our world. I strive to make sculptures that possess a similar elemental happenstance. By dropping and tossing meticulously worked clay slabs, I relinquish control of form to gravity in an act that is akin to natural phenomena. Through this process I enter into a reciprocal conversation with the material that acts as a generative engine, revealing new forms and lines of inquiry. Once vitrified by the fire of the kiln, the hardened ceramics retain fluid impressions of this fleeting, energetic state, moments frozen in time.
I use play, chance, and a collaboration with gravity to create ceramics that are a visceral record of movement and materials colliding. I am drawn to how forms in nature tell the stories of their creation in the marks on their surfaces and the posture of their bodies. Erosion by wind and rain, freeze-thaw cycles, tectonic upheavals, and biological growth and decomposition create an intricate web of contingencies that shape our world. I strive to make sculptures that possess a similar elemental happenstance. By dropping and tossing meticulously worked clay slabs, I relinquish control of form to gravity in an act that is akin to natural phenomena. Through this process I enter into a reciprocal conversation with the material that acts as a generative engine, revealing new forms and lines of inquiry. Once vitrified by the fire of the kiln, the hardened ceramics retain fluid impressions of this fleeting, energetic state, moments frozen in time.
