Clay and I go way back. One of my first memories is sitting under an old, oak tree playing in a mudpuddle. A glass milk bottle, imprinted with orange lettering, dribbles out the last of the water into a slurry forming between the sizable roots. The muddy earth between my fingers takes on several shapes until a haphazard bowl emerges. I press flowers and leaves into the moist mud. Later, I place the dried bowl in the street gutter, turn the garden hose on full blast and aim it at the small piece. Bits of dried flowers melt off and float in the brown stream that was once a bowl. Even at five years old, I was fascinated with the interaction between humble materials.

 

Lots has happened since those first mudpie days. Although I’ve been showing my work since 1985, several times another life happened and I stepped away from my art. Why, I ask myself, does one so easily abandon the part of the soul that sings? I stumbled and bumbled and ended right back where I was meant to be—in my studio. The urge to create is too painful to be ignored. It’s an unrelenting thrum of desire to make something out of something else. Rather like the innate desire of a seed to become a tree…

 

Dana Goforth