Michael Lancaster

Artist's Statement:

After 30 years of working in clay, I have reinvented myself, as clay and fire has reinvented me.  Although I owe my roots to traditional pottery making and apprenticeship, I awoke one day to the desire to take a bow saw to my thrown work, to take it apart and reassemble it.  In this exercise I discovered that my art can represent transformation.  That in us all, we have the ability to reassemble ourselves, thus recreating a new expression from an ‘old vessel’.  I expect my ‘new work’ to be at once recognizable and yet to cause the viewer to question.  It is my intention to invoke questioning, but not to disturb the origins of pottery making.  I use Raku as a force and technique of firing because of its spontaneity, and because it adds an element of old and new.  My forms are inspired by industrial architecture and by primitive dwellings.  Influences Include, Don Reitz, Val Cushing, Willem deKooning, Chojiro, Peter Voulkus and Mark di Suvero.