When someone asks me, or even when I've asked myself, "why do you make this art?" I often pause to consider if my words can carry the right merit. Because there's always this aspect of the "felt sense" present in the visual arts, which reciprocates a kind of non-verbal understanding.

I might respond by saying, "I feel that these vestigial shapes and these repetitive forms and designs uniquely describe our most vital and peripheral shared experiences. That these shapes, segments, and age-old proportions express and evoke an integral creativity as they use the basic and universal language of potential and effectuality. As it would be, our ancient ancestors learned this language long ago, and taught it to us. In my own unique way, I want to continue this legacy and to share this spontaneous and universal heritage with others, through ceramic art."

Below, I have also considered some more words about my personal connection to art, design, ceramics and its legacy, and also to this expression and evocation of basic shapes and patterning that I have adopted into my creative process.

Afflatus -

(in Ancient Greek, inspiration)

I find inspiration in art that touches, demonstrates, and celebrates some of the original and primary dimensions of creative expression such as in proportion, form, frequency, and rarity. These dimensions of artistic expression evoke a unique tribute to the inherent creative forces of potential and eventuality. They bear exigency of connectivity and association, such as in symmetry, parallel, likeness, and orientation. They bear exigency of capacity and originality, such as in convergence, continuum, situation, and presence. And these dimensions bear exigency of variation and contrast, such as in divergence, irregularity, diversity, and orientation.

From these primal and vestigial bearings, a sidled expression emerges where cyclical experience meets linear experience, and it informs its record, instrument, and pedagogy. This universal accord perfuses and informs both the proverbial creative spark and those who touch it.

My art will draw creativity from this age-old sidled expression, in its continued deeper essence, and in homage to the ancient history of art in our lives, and the world.

Logos -

(in Ancient Greek, logic)

          As the age-old adage goes, "form follows function".

In the aegis of ceramic art, this adage has continued to inspire both timeless and transitory creative incident and expression in my art. Many masters and students alike have eagerly forged this creative pathway for millennia past to append the stock and tribute of creativity, so that artistry itself might take form and thrive.

This adage suggests how art and creativity are both sought and seeking. While the artist sits with the clay, the clay sits with artist, too. The tool and the maker will merge into one. This continued discourse is primal and vestigial in its origins and capacity. It is a narrative, a mythicism, and a symbology.

From these diverse dimensions, I find that the "function of the form" is meaningful not only in its creative interpretation, but also in its repetition. And in this effort, creativity inspires the compass and capacity of origin, obligation, and shared experience. I have found that the effort is grounded in repetition, sincerity, and custom, and it centers me in and between what I have already accomplished, and what I yet wish to create.

I also find especially with patterning, as I imitate an ancient symbology and also give it new meaning in a present framework, that I engage a well-tested and time-honored sensory discourse which carries natural, sincere, and basic reciprocality. This ancient discourse incorporates the proverbial "felt-sense" as a modality for non-verbal conceptualizing and communicating, and from this fundamental expression demonstrates the manifest inherency of form as function, in the world.

By this axiom, I am always learning and always practicing both new and old skills.

The energy to make manifest this manifold concept develops as an exigent pattern, at once within my mind and my hands. And experimenting as this exigency repeats, develops, and changes has been an unmatched commitment to performance, creativity, and vision.

Ethos -

(in Ancient Greek, emotion)

I find deep inspiration when the legacy of freedom, justice, democracy, as well as other profound moral and ethical concepts are sown and harvested in the world and in my life, studio, and creative process. Partly, for modernity's sake in its phenomenological and existential explorations, and partly for the earnestness with which these forms of participation fortify the mind and heart of this world.

I find that these profound dialectical and dialogical inquiries and explorations naturally oblige the creative realm and spark. As well as oblige my ambitions and vision to reciprocate the scope of my context and participation in the world as an artist, with shared means and efforts.

As an artist I know that art is both internal and impressionistic, and both impartial and perceiving. I try to approach these unique qualities of art with admiration and favor as I engage the national and international market, and the confluence of diversity in culture, ontology, and pedagogy, and the legacy of evolution.

The collection of the additional requite moral and ethical concepts is wide and long, including value and abundance, origin and distinction, connectedness and association, commonness and diversity, education and knowledge, honesty and virtue, celebration and ceremony, and tribute and respect. These depths of our human constitution have sustained equality, adaptation, and evolution for millions of years.

I aim to create art that will respectably intimate this legacy as a prerogative.

I will gather and ration these profound concepts, in my life. More often, during periods with historical emphasis and exigency for justice. And, in the face of anthropogenic, political, economic, and religious discord, inequality, wars, and uncertainty.

Such periods give occasion to develop a more profound social and political pedagogy of equality - not as some blanched 'sameness', but surely in the merit of diversity. I am reminded of how I might offer support and remediate pain, or meaningfully address casualties left behind, neglected, and unguarded in the world and by history.

I find these humanist convictions have developed firmly in my mind and heart from a life-long dedication to honesty and truth. And that the essence of these deeper feelings endures within my life, and the entire world.

       Truth willing, I believe art will heal the world.

As it is, much more is meant for another time. I digress...

In Conclusion -

As the sun sets, and the moon rises, and the stars glide between the horizons, with (a lot of) water, heat, and luck, my clay turns from dust to mud and into rock.

While I celebrate with earth and art in the studio, we all still have very much else to celebrate in the world as it is!

Thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoy my site!

Eva M. Ally