Sherd Sculptures from My Alley Excavation

Something I really enjoy finding are the white glazed ceramics where the moisture and rust have got under the glaze and coloured the crackle to varying degrees.

Sometimes I have been able to find most of a vessel and have stuck the fragments together. Other times I have made assemblages from various pieces, forming them into sculptures. Either way these objects have a true connection to this specific place and the inhabitants of this block going back many years. I feel that in some way I’m giving these objects a new life simply by digging them up. This activity is made all the more rewarding when I start reconstituting them or, in the case of more mundane fragments, giving them a new form. Actually this activity of reassembling to make a new object ties in with my practice as a brick sculptor. I have been reassembling broken brick sculptures into new forms. Both of these methods of working involve the subversion of  utility ceramics, crockery or brick, to create ceramic sculpture.