Hand built ceramic great grey owl sculpture, oxide wash and underglaze finish, mounted on a black perch.
Eyes forward, set in a face that's almost all disc. A great grey owl's face isn't decoration, it's an instrument, those rings of feathers built to funnel sound to ears set slightly off from each other so the bird can pinpoint a vole moving under snow it can't see through. This one is built at that same scale of attention, the concentric pattern carried right through the clay.
It's Alberta's bird, provincially, though it doesn't know that and wouldn't care. What it does is sit still for long stretches, watching and listening, then drop through snow that would hold a person's weight to take something it heard and never saw. The stillness here is the working stillness, not restfulness.
Built in stoneware, the facial disc worked in low relief and washed in oxide so the rings hold shadow. Eyes glazed yellow, bill left pale against the dark of the face. Perched on a black base, straight-cut, more post than branch.
Stoneware, oxide wash, underglaze. 37 x 16 x 20 cm. 2026. Commissions welcome.
