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Jason WASON
First, there is just a plastic bag of clay. An unknown clay,with an exotic name. It is slightly daunting. It sits on the table. A foreign friend. Once the hands start to move the clay, I hope that it responds like an old friend, but we are, as yet, some distance apart. My mind is still reverberating with images of the vast mountain ranges of Siberia and Mongolia, that I saw from high in the sky. Flashing before my eyes are the rivers twisting and turning, narrowing and broadening on a strange new scale. This is a view of reality that I always find breathtaking and somehow unreal. Flying into the night at an awe inspiring 951kph at altitudes that have ferocious sub zero temperatures. Been in the air for four hours, St Petersburg below me, another 7820 km to go, before I reach Japan.
So I return to the bag of clay on the table.
At my workshop at home, If I am not quite sure what to do or if my mind is not focused properly, I might just tidy around for a while, sweep up, just catching sidelong glances at the most recent work on the shelves. Staying open to a dialogue with the work, which will ultimately suggest which direction to take. My mind is still too stormy to start work. I am waiting for an element of calm to return. Waiting around like a fisherman, for that bite, that allows the work to begin In a similar way when I am on the wheel, I must centre myself, and then centre the clay. It is a process that I know well.
I open the bag of clay, and move it around, beginning to manipulate it, to give it some meaning, some sense of direction. I am playing with the idea of east and west. You and me. I live on the far western edge of England at the end of a peninsula, that stretches into the Atlantic Ocean. I am surrounded by sea. One of the longest pieces of sculpture in the world is an undersea cable that stretches from Lands End, just by my house, to Ninomiya in Japan. But that is transitory, what really touches us both, are the oceans themselves. These vast bodies of water, two thirds of our planet, from which we all evolved.
Ideas start to develop, and I muse on the concept that all of humanity is being bathed in an ocean of consciousness.
I realise that God visits me 24 hours each day, but I am rarely home
The work begins………………
Thank you Seto,
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