Grand Hotels

English Shops

proposal idea

quick cut'n'paste for Evanston fountain square

modern kitchens and other places for tile

Azulejos

Some creative tile applications by the Portuguese.

Holy Family

I'm a religious person. It's appropriate I should make some religious art. Before Christmas I painted with underglazes on ceramic bisque tiles the Nativity.

The Nativity 1st appeared in Art after the middle of the third century.

It is a simple recognizable scene with complex overtones. Typical iconography presents the Christ child illuminating the manger and faces with a halo of light, Joseph depicted in a secondary position, Mary admiring and worshiping baby Jesus, and angels forming a harmony of spiritual and earthly presence. It is a tender scene of the Holy birth revealing the love of God, unearned and total.

lil' Marcel

Marcel Proust was born in 1871 and died in 1922. 'A' la recherhe du temps perdu' (In Search of Lost Time) was published in seven volumes and was immediately recognized as a revolutionary work of literature. Seamlessly weaving contemporary ideas of Darwin, Freud, and Einstein with skills of analysis and sharp wit, Proust created such an extraordinary novel, that many claim that it is the greatest fiction to date.

In Search of Lost Time is a fictional autobiography by a man named Marcel. The first forty pages describe his sleeplessness as a young boy anxious for his mother's goodnite kiss. It is here that the Proustian Experience is introduced. As a man, Marcel, takes a madeliene cookie and dips it in his tea and suddenly recalls in vivid detail his memories at Combray where his aunt would give him a madeliene dunked in tea as a boy. The association, unadultered by any recurrance in his life since, bring forth memories potent and clear. He realizes that experiences remain eternally present in the unconscious and discovers his vocation to write In Search of Lost Time.

The novel blurs the discovery to tell the discovery. It is a work of art about one who becomes one who makes art. To attempt to read In Search of Lost Time without help may prove futile. I found How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton and The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust by Howard Moss both to be invaluable introductions to entering Proust's masterwork.

French design on tile

This is an image of a tile I painted of a design that I found in a book of French wallpapers from 1800-1850

Hand-made tile installation

These images are taken of a project I worked on for a client. They are stoneware tile that were formed from slabs of raw clay and hand-cut for the design. The slabs were allowed to dry and then fired at 4 to bisque at which point I painted them by hand with brush and underglazes. They were refired at 06 to finish. As you can see a truly custom and unique piece.

I researched the design thoroughly. The out come is 9 ft of a formal Italian garden landscape that includes the Villa Borghese and approx. 6 ft of an Italian countryside (campagna) including Villa Capra (Villa Rotunda).

The clients, Sherry Hayslip and Cole Smith, are very pleased.