Dogs Have Masters

Abstract

The vignette "Dogs Have Masters" deals with the role of transition and the power of transformation as it applies to the roles of loss, offering, sacrifice and protection. Ceramic traditions of containment, corporeal metaphor and the allegorical reference of earth are examined through an awakening of subconscious and conscious meaning and associations. Commercial porcelains and unfired terra cotta become engaged in a visual dialogue based upon the idiom of binary opposites that create universal balances. Ceramics is shown here as opposition ends of the spectrum leading to the same sobering and perhaps unexpected conclusion: even in death, clay is man's best friend. The imagery was chosen from a wide range of influences: Japanese gardens of old Kyoto; Egyptian mythology with its systematic blueprints for an eternal afterlife; the phrasing of the Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez; the gay nightclubs of my youth and the coded messages of American jazz music.