“The Earth is Our Ashtray” Ashtray

Ideas born a year and a half apart come together this week.

When I painted a large ceramic globe bead with fine silver as a class exercise, I wondered to myself what I’d eventually do with it. The bead came out of the kiln looking like the earth would after we’ve caused some serious damage.

One day I found countless cigarette butts on the beach in the surf zone. We also find them on the street outside our house, waiting to be washed down into the gutter which leads to San Francisco Bay if we don’t pick up someone else’s trash first.

The question: “Is the earth an ashtray?” kept popping into my head.

Also last year, the Metal Arts Guild of San Francisco (of which I’m a member) proposed a show called “Urban Renaissance”.  I decided it was time to make an ashtray tying all these thoughts together.  You can read the artist’s statement for the piece and also see it in person at the ACCI Gallery in Berkeley, CA starting Friday November 13th. The show’s opening reception begins at 6pm.

URBAN RENAISSANCE

CONCEPT: What does it mean to live, work, dress and move in today’s urban environment?

“Urban” means many things today: cosmopolitan and sophisticated, popular culture and ethnic diversity, street savvy and fast pace living, plus museums, shops and a multitude of architectural styles. Our cities throb with energy, creativity, and diversity—5 star restaurants, upscale fashion, high tech, and a banquet of cultural wealth contrasts with congestion, pollution, homelessness, and garbage-laden alleyways.

Urban Renaissance explores these contrasts through the use of materials, form and construction, drawing from a spectrum of conceptual pieces to wearable jewelry, sculptural works to wall-mounted art, traditional metal work to pieces which utilize alternative materials.