In 2018 I went to the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana as part of the Cultural Confluence Woodfire Conference. Each day Lindsay Oesterritter and I picked up trimmings from other participants’ projects and collaborated on making solid reversible forms to be fired in the wood kilns during the conference. Today, collecting Osage -oranges from our field I was reminded of the surface of one of the pieces that I kept from our series. Seeing the Osage-orange with this solid dish creates resonances of surface, density of form and depth of shadows.
To The Spiders of This Room
You who waited here before me
in silence mothers of silence
I always knew you were present
whether or not I could see you
in your gray clouds your high corners
spinners of the depths of shadows…
— W.S. Merwin, excerpt from his book, The Pupil, A. A. Knopf, © 2001 by W. S. Merwin.