Keith Crockett

http://www.blurb.com/user/store/Precarious

Keith  Crockett has worked as an installation artist for over a decade. He titles his work under the name of Precarious Illusion. More recently he has been manipulating images he finds with a painterly sensibility.
The blurb site above, lists books he has put together that show work from each phase of his career.
The images below represent work done in a tract of land that was the site our local colleges used for the dumping of construction material and trees.
Wind storms felled several trees. Sidewalks were replaced, and blocks of concrete were available to use. The site was a rich source of material and landscape that resulted in an impressive body of work.

I just listed my sections of bamboo, cast in high fire porcelain to my etsy account.
the link is here
http://www.etsy.com/shop/winnie77

I have also listed some paper yarn that I have been making
in my etsy shop...

a specific page for a bamboo section is here:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/54061116/porcelain-bamboo-vase

These are smaller versions of bamboo sections than the panel of multiple sections I have posted earlier. Those are about 20-26 inches long, 2-3 inches in diameter.
The bamboo above is smaller.
You could hang a small bud vase on the wall in a location where you sit....near a desk.
simple, quiet, unglazed to show the detail from the mold.
I hope you find them interesting.

random thoughts and images

One of my all time favorite art supply stores, Sterling Art, was in Irvine. They would provide a human being discount on purchases made in the store.
These drawing figures were an example of the spirit of joy amongst the folks who worked in the store.
The store had to move, I am not sure of the details of it's sad journey. But they relocated into a cavernous warehouse space down the road.
I went looking for them last week to resupply some of my drawing pens. And they have disappeared....gone.
Such a sad case.

Chinese roof tile of a dragon with a warrior sitting astride.

I took this image to show the stance of the roof tile. There is a tremendous amount of wisdom in the construction, in which the appendages are lifted from the surface allowing the form to shrink during firing and not crack away from the center of the form.

The Getty Villa in Malibu is a remarkable museum. They allow photos, and I spent my visit with my iPhone capturing details of the visit. This stone, with text continues to be memorable.

 This thought makes the Doug Louie bowl appropriate to include in this post.  His images for a narrative story. Often scenes that have the same logic as dreams.

I also think incomplete forms that allow the viewer to participate and complete the form are more interesting. I am more involved in the process with less details.

the work of Chuck Moffit

A good friend has a website of his sculpture work....
to see his work, visit
http://chuckmoffit.com/home.html

He also has launched a new website

http://objectsmade.com/home.html

both are very interesting sites

The tradition in China to celebrate a child's first birthday including the wearing of a hat, that is what you see here. The wonder of this hat is there are a couple of heads. So, there is confusion when the child is wearing the hat about which head is prominent. The hat is used to protect.

The work of Doug Louie

I have worked with Doug for many years, and have collected his work for easily 25 years. His things continue to inspire me and are amongst the things I own that I treasure. The work you see represented here is either glazed or charcoal fired. What I love about his work is his drawing, whether with a brush or with the clay. 

Doug has an etsy shop, visit 
http://www.etsy.com/shop/akikonomu

A somewhat recent bowl. It was called a bubble bowl. I used a carbon trap shino.

I make plates that are somewhat squared...
again, shino with a black oxide.
the black oxide is iron ox, chrome ox, copper ox, if I am feeling wealthy, a little cobalt ox...it makes a dense
black.

shino bottle....wax applied first, then glaze.
I liked the surface of this bottle. It is interesting to compare the surface of the bowl above, to this stoneware bottle. The flashing from the shino glaze on porcelain is more orange, though I have helped the process on the porcelain with a coating of soda ash applied to the clay...then wax, then glaze.

A couple of my brushes. They are inside a frame, resulting is a reflection of me....sorry.
My favorite section of the bamboo plant to use for brush handles is the area closest to the ground, or rhizome/root.
That results in the culms spacing being closer together, the shape being more varied and interesting. As the bamboo stalk grows, it develops longer and more regular spaces between the culms. Both of these are from my stand of black bamboo. The hair I use is elk mane.

more history

I have made a lot of houses...seems to be a part of my vocabulary. These were made around 1986. The houses were charcoal fired. Porcelain in the charcoal kiln has a remarkable surface. I would hold the houses in the kiln with wadding that is made with a portion of ball clay in the mix. The iron in the ball clay would cause the orange flashing.
The scale of these houses is about 2 inches tall. 
The lessons I learned with the houses is the slow evolution of ideas, in which form finds subtle resolution.
The evolution is not something I can specifically articulate. It is also a necessary part of the process.
They became the marker/benchmark for holding onto an idea and working with it for a long period of time, until the form evolves. The first houses I made were clumsy....these later examples were surprising in the subtle evolution of the idea and form.

So I return to the houses. Sort of cycling through ideas I have. I have made the houses in a variety of sizes.

These houses are about 12 inches tall.

Texture in clay is something I like working with. The tool with perforated holes in the cylinder comes from the inside of a VW tailpipe...I have found other forms that allow the same pattern.  This particular tool belongs
to a friend of mine. I have not been able to locate
one of these for myself.
I am always on the alert for objects to use for texture.
I either make stamps with clay, or locate objects that provide interesting images.

 These are all examples of stamps I use. The faces are small pins. The faces are only about 1 inch tall.
The small vase is a fish stamp I made from a toy carp.

Fish are favorite forms to include in my work. I have access to a wonderful koi pond. The pond had several very large fish. This Spring they were gone and replaced with a new generation of koi. I will watch and see how long it takes for the new population to grow. The previous batch had several fish that were over a foot in length.

 This is an image of a Netsuke I found on ebay. The gourd is an old version of a container for alcohol...so one wonders how much this fellow has ingested to image himself turned into a carp. Strange dreams.

current forms

This is what I photographed this week. The houses on the table are a series of forms made over several years. The larger houses have space to place an LED light. I made them so they could be wall pieces. They would look great outside with the flickering candle like LED light.
The bamboo has been an ongoing project. I cast pieces of bamboo and the pieces vary in size from the longest which is 24 inches long, about 2 inches in diameter. The bamboo has a hole so they hang from a nail. The cast bamboo is high fire porcelain with no glaze so the surface of the clay shows the detail of the plant. They could hold water for a flower, or just work as a wall piece.

random things

 The clay studio at school gets bird nests in the Spring.  There are some birds that do not survive. So, I fire them. This is what is left after a bisque firing.

I wanted to explore other materials. Objects that are contained in sleeves. I like the pattern.

More boxes..a narrative series.
Don't know what the narration is....