#9 summer summit 2021

I have been looking at a group of bottles on our dining room table, each one from a different firing, each with a different focus on form and surface. On my studio docket today was to make a new series of bottles. I often think about still lives. I remember an interrupted conversation I once had with Gwyn Hanssen Pigot. We were at the Garth Clark Gallery in New York City and I asked her if all the pots in a single still life parade came from the same firing. I wondered if pots ever hung around her studio waiting for the right mates to come along as she composed her parades. Her Australian friend interrupted us–admonishing me as if I didn’t understand how successful Gwyn was–so I never got to return to the conversation. Gwyn was inspired by Morandi’s still lives. When I take photos I often think about his painterly universe of form and structure. I imagine him looking hard at his objects as if any extra effects had been scraped away, as if the emptiness of the canvas was filled through his objects.

Over there’s the ur-photograph,
          Giorgio Morandi, glasses pushed up on his forehead,
Looking hard at four objects—
Two olive oil tins, one wine bottle, one flower vase,
A universe of form and structure.

-Charles Wright, from Looking Around