After the death of my friend and fellow artist Jason Harper, I found inspiration from his thesis work, Beautiful Alchemy, a collection of ceramic pieces that Jason had been working on during his graduate studies. He found beauty in the process of working with clay, and letting magical things happen in the kiln that were out of his control. His work was reminiscent of nature, sometimes living as recognizable pieces of bark and tree branches yet in ceramic form.
These works from 2014 were my way of finally coping with his untimely death, and to pay tribute to him for something that we honestly never got to fully dive into together—our love for art & creation. Each piece has elements that harken to Jason’s love for nature and the unexpected that transcends across his body of work.
The landscape is a less literal portrait of Jason, composed of three unique ceramic pieces to build a new Kansas landscape.
The tree branches serve as a memory of all the times that I would come to visit, only to find him hoarding branches of all shapes and sizes to study for his next projects in clay. My sculpture installation Thursday was also nostalgic of his fascination with tree branches.
Finally, the graphite portrait comes from a 35mm photograph that our friend Travis had taken and shared online, the pose a fitting way to remember Jason’s fun and goofy personality.