The ‘Cleave’ series

One of many quirks in English, the word ‘cleave’ teaches us that opposite truths and meanings can be held together as one. Of course it means to split, and yet it also means to cling tightly to.

Growing up the open fire, and it’s associated rituals, was a source of comfort and normality: stacking wood, splitting kindling, ferrying logs back and forth, laying the fire, and clearing ash all marked time passing; daily, and seasonally. - Now, the open split grain of seasoned logs evoke the heavy birch chopping block, and Dad’s thin kindling axe on autumn mornings with smells of Sunday cooking foaming warm from the kitchen into the cold dry air. My Proustian cake dipped in tea.

Theses boxes are hand carved using the slivers and shards of wood which surround the block after a morning of log splitting. As tools they impart their truth and texture to the clay, and also lend a reassuring friction to the cut, slowing down each act and movement, helping focus and memory flow.

Of course I am trying to capture and freeze something ephemeral in clay. - Ceramics can endure Time like few other materials, after all. If nothing else I’d like to present something of the wood itself, so wood-firing them seemed only right. They are unglazed, allowing the fly-ash, and the mineral character of the wood to create the colours on their surface. Truth to process and material history are central.

Perhaps the most personal and moving series I have made to date, these boxes speak of separation and of clinging, and of holding dear and precious things safe inside. That slight tension where lid and body meet is overcome by the carved lines which reveal their shared history and connect them visually.

Throughout the long process of developing this series and seeing it to a kind of fruition, I wrote several posts which muse their meaning, and document my growing understanding of how I relate to them:

22nd November 2021 - I had already struck upon the name, and was understanding how the ‘head-space’ of woodland work was a positive influence.

20th February 2022 - I could see how the pace of working and the contemplation of inside/outside was important.

4th April 2022 - Perhaps the connection to my childhood which the wood gave helped me through these dark times? - Sometimes making a tool to help make the thing is a hopeful form of procrastination..

5th April 2022 - Realising the joy of chopping wood as a mindful meditation.

29th July 2023 - Revisiting the series, and making afresh for the scheduled wood-firing.

7th August 2023 - A full-circle-moment as we embarked on the wood-firing. A farewell, and a new beginning combined.

13th August 2023 - The first few photographs of these old friends. Another firing scheduled and a huge amount learned.

18th August 2023 - Reflection on the journey of this first carved box.