FIRST PLACE IN MIXED MEDIA WENT TO MY TINY CLAY AND METAL COLLAGE, ‘Con-Fusion” (Or, “When Clay Meets Metal in a Hot Kiln”).’

Presented at the April 6, 2015, opening of the annual Alexander City, Alabama, Art Show, the award is my first recognition for a work that’s entirely collage–no paint. The white clay rectangle holding the fused, burnt and broken pieces of metal is tiny, no more than a couple of inches wide, but I loved working on it! I liked how the process was going to be unpredictable. I knew my clay-and-metal composition going into the kiln would be different from the one coming out since most metals are burned or destroyed by the high heat required for firing clay. Copper, however, has a high melting point, so I was hopeful it would survive and fuse to the clay where I had placed it. And for the most part that is what happened! Meantime the other metals on the piece melted and even burned and broke the clay. Since I fired several of these little creations, or rather “misfired” them, you might say, I had plenty of salvage parts to create an interesting collage. Actually I ended up with several collages. And I really like them because they weren’t the clean, polished designs I started with but rather raw compositions with burn marks, broken edges and blackened and hardened molten metal. To me, they are like us human beings–flawed, tested and sometimes broken by our trials yet re-formed by our determination into something surprisingly original and beautiful.