In Honor of Creation: An Artist’s Prayer

            Manifestation of the Divine resides in every Human creature. We are meant to reflect the mind and joy of our Creator; within our souls there lies an inherent need to make smaller creations of our own. Across the earth, this has been displayed in every region, from painting to writing to aeronautics, from cooking to mechanics to the immense task of guiding (with the grace of God) those who have come to inherit our world. No glory wrought by Humanity stands without honor to the One who infused us with the holy fire that inspired the heavens and the earth. So says the Bible: where we fail to worship, Creation itself will resound with His praise…

            And everything made by our hands is part of this mortal world, a mode of play with the galaxies He entrusted to our care.

            It is from dust that He made us; to dust our bodies will return, our souls brought to His eternal Paradise. This symbolism shows in my work dually: through the clay material of my Human forms, and through the inevitable termination of each mug, each book, each sculpture. Whether through mishandling (an honor, in that it indicates there was handling to begin with) or through the incident of forgotten time, everything I make will fall back to the dust, to be reborn in God’s down-winding earth…

            And there I find a chance to savor the taste of mortality, while carrying the spirit of their creation in my heart. These figures are split, they are rent, they are fragile, they expose the hues of their inner selves with a nearly childlike bliss as they go about their fascinations and interactions: small-scaled according to our own ability to marvel at Creation. Throughout my stories' 'better-fleshed' figures, the reader is witness to every part of their mind, welcome to draw or reject parallels of circumstance and character - daring the reader to forge connection with the impossible. Sometimes together, sometimes alone, showing spurts of often simple emotion that blend with bestial aspects to bring a better sense of empathy to their postures, all of these beings are meant to represent the Human engagement with the natural world, with each other, in the unfathomable balancing act that is Creation. It is only natural, then, that they should resemble constructs so strongly in clay, and people so strongly in words. 

            Come, watch with me. Touch with me; see what we have made, the people of this world.

            Together, we will celebrate the spirit of God within us.

            Glory be to the Lord of the heavens and the earth; hallowed be His name, and the name of the Son who died for our atonement, and of the Spirit who lives beside us until the day we are called home.