My submission for the Blanc de Chine competition is “Esprit/Spirit 2.”This sculpture consists of four ceramic objects presented in relation to two wooden bases. The piece is therefore a set unified thematically and in media. Historically, white Chinese porcelains in France were mounted on ormolu bronze bases and in China in the Qing Dynasty on carved wooden bases. My contemporary porcelains are presented in a manner consistent with this historical context as an acknowledgement of the unbroken entwinement of creative energy.

The major object of the set is a fluted carved wheel. On the front side of the wheel is a silhouette image of a prototypical female head. On the reverse side is a harder to discern dragon head and a curved tail inspired by the Warring States period (475-221 BC) Chinese jade carvings. The accompanying vertically
presented circular disc pays homage to the Bi jade discs with which Chinese buried their dead as a talisman for the departed to enjoy afterlife. In front of these two larger circular forms is a small offering bowl and the impression of the inside of my hand, the source of all my life’s work.

“Esprit/Spirit 2,” made of Dehua porcelain during a Blanc de Chine residency, is a representation of different, yet complementary, universal energies. The silhouette and dragon are similar to Nietzsche’s Apollo and Dionysus energies in The Birth of Tragedy, a controversial work that has been reviled and admired since being first published in 1872. In their oppositional energies, they are simultaneously creative and destructive, and it is in this path that the artist must walk.