#currentmood

We need touch. It’s elemental. Something, or someone, worthy enough to make contact with.

The past year acutely increased my preoccupation with how a lack of physical contact, its inherent warmth and friction, can hollow us. Operating with an infinite power to nurture and protect, we transform into an instrument of creation. Defied and neglected, we shape shift into weapons, relying on physical strength and our ability to inflict harm.

I began to understand rage as the absence of touch, approximating violence to a void of tenderness. Surely all bad decisions, must begin and end with an abstinence from corporeal connection?

Once most visual artists recognize their anatomy’s potential as a tool for expression, our creative arc bends to ask "What are the marks my body makes?" With an enduring sense of hope, #currentmood strived to elevate touch from a basic bodily sense to an essential element. Alongside food, air, water, and shelter, I let it become foundational to my personal pyramid, equivalent to “all the things.”

To help bring #currentmood to fruition, I implicated a maestro of touch, Alice Ballard. When I first (and finally) met Alice, I was heartbroken and raw, clinging desperately to the potential for our collaboration and the healing qualities of touch.

Like the “Pinchers Anonymous” group she gathered weekly to combat the isolation of the pandemic, we decided to build smallish pinch pots, the original and purest of our sculptural forms.

Like an opera singer performing scales, or a sushi chef devoting years to perfecting rice, repeatedly sculpting a ball of clay into a viable vessel is a humble, yet essential skill to master.