Haystack Mountain School of Crafts Open Studio Residency

Terry O’Neill and I attended Haystack as a collaborative team. We both worked on “The ocean is the original mood ring”, an installation for my show at KWAG (Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery). The phrase is taken from seventeen, a poem by Sue Goyette from her collection Ocean. The poem served as anchor for the piece, which included the short film below. Here are the first 4 lines of the poem:

The ocean is the original mood ring.

Often, and for days, it convinced us

we felt an industrial grey malaise with a deep heart

of blue. The occasional whip of a whitecap idea.

I spent most of my time in the ceramics studio, as Terry sweated it out in the hot shop—no shortage of inspiration as the school is located on the coast of Deer Isle, Maine. It’s the kind of place that restores faith in creative energy and the people that make things.