By Hilary Green
2022
glazed stoneware
26x14x14cm
When asked to think on 'memory', I immediately return to my childhood, where my sensory experiences were heightened. My nostalgia is wrapped up in tactile experiences and textural visions where I first made sense of the world, finding beauty in materials and nature. Rolling pastry with my mother and decorating birthday cakes with buttery icing. Throwing crisp leaves and squishing mud between my fingers. Cracking rocks open and feeling coral like tree bark. Gently brushing the tassels on my grandmother’s curtains. Lying and watching the fluffy clouds change over rooftops. These works are a personal return to my sculptural beginnings. When I sculpt wet clay today, my hands engage in play, enjoy mark-making and invent movements to express forms that I hope one day will also make you nostalgic.
The process of sculpting a vessel sometimes feels like a dance. Listening through touch at what the clay wants to do, pushing, pulling, repeating. Spinning the vessel around as I contemplate the next move. Clay, in this malleable state, is when I feel most interested in the process. It is flexible and strong. It gives and forgives. A little like a special memory over time. Finally, the glazes I have chosen for these pieces are ones I would say ‘look delicious’. Perhaps it is my wish for them to be iced and cut like a cake. Stone crumbs. Like a cake, they would be temporarily appreciated and then devoured with only your memory of their form and their taste on your tongue to remain.