Kevin's ARTIST STATEMENT

                I felt my first true sense of attachment to clay while attending school at Northern Arizona University in 1980.  I had touched clay before but it was here that I first experienced the true magic of the material.  Clay is unlike any other medium. It is a sedimentary material.  It doesn't just appear, it evolves, birthed by the very growth and ageing of this world. 

As a representation of time it holds a life, a sense of history. As a working material it holds a quality which no other material holds; when intense heat is applied it transforms itself into a material that bears a similar permanence to that of its origin.....bedrock.

In my world clay is a workable material, just as it is in nature’s world.  Throughout the eras it has been a storehouse for the life that has preceded us.  In it's fine grain sediments one can find a historical record of life.  As an artist I ponder this past and I try to hear what it tells me of the future. How far has it come and how far will it go?

Through research and field study I have worked closely with these elements of time. The fossils in turn become metaphors and icons of the common mortality that all us living creatures share.  My intrigue of the past takes me and my ceramic work into the depths of time and history.  

During many of my fossil expeditions I am inspired by the images, patterns and textures that I discover and that have been created through erosion and the forces of nature.  These elements and the fossils themselves come alive in my work to remind us that we are only transient residents in this ever changing world.

~ Kevin T Conlin