Mimetic Worlds
“So what’s it like to live in the world we have lost, a mimetic world when things had spirit-copies, and nature could thus look back and speak to one through dreams and omens, nature not being something to be dominated, but something yielding to or magically out-performed and people - like Darwin’s Fuegians - were “born mimics”? To ask this rhetorical, even mischievous, question, redolent in its self-assuredness with utopian longing for a theory of iconic meaning soaked in correspondences, bound to impulses surging through chains of sympathy, is to enter another body of knowledge, another bodily knowing. Let us begin with the soul. ”
Upon reflecting about what draws me into the making of art…
at the core, it comes from a deep longing…an ever present ache that sparks an exploration of what it means to be human. When I read the above quote from Taussig today, I especially resonated with the first few words…
“So, what’s it like to live in the world we have lost”.
It is this lost world that I am longing to re(member)…
a world ensouled.
“Remembering is simply a matter of recollecting the essence of ourselves – of gathering our own finest pollen into the present for the sake of the future". Peter Kingsley.
A gasp of amazement is present along my journey of making from
the discovery of clay seams in the earth to
seeing the finished clay form, as if for the first time, to
the firing process where the surface develops a shifting patina marked by heat, alchemy, and atmosphere to
the gathering of vessels from ashes, and through cleaning and polishing, revealing their hidden beauty
Taussig argues that mimesis is not just copying, but a magical, embodied way of knowing. Working with clay is the experience that brings me closest to this magical, embodied way of knowing. Makes me wonder if nature is speaking through these forms and my work is not inspired by nature rather my work is to yield to nature.
The ceramic sculpture you see here was fired and polished just recently (04/2026). The clay form was a closed sphere until it fell off the table, four feet to the ground. I was astonished to notice it was still in tact, and, in fact, it’s shape was more interesting. I opened up a hole in the form, which cracked slightly on either side of the opening while drying. I mended the crack using paper clay and decided to fire it anyway. Now that she has been transformed into ceramic, I’ll embellish the crack to bring it more fully into the story of the sculpture, rather than try to hide it, or leave as is…a faint trace. I will wait for guidance.
All along the path of life we fall down, we crack open, and, if we are lucky, we metabolize and integrate these experiences in ways that foster beauty and flexibility to engage creatively with a rapidly changing world.
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
