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2100 Smallman St. Pittsburgh, PA 15222 | 412.261.7003 | www.contemporarycraft.org
My work intends to describe narratives through a visual vocabulary of everyday experience. As we travel around our daily environments, there are pockets of puzzling events and objects. My work specifically focuses on personal associations connected to all the uniquely human products and by-products I see during my own limited experience. In this sense, my work can be characterized as autobiographical. My current work is a mixture of personal fascinations. The cloches began as a form inspired from Victorian collections of botanical specimens. The technique of making them is derived from the Venetian goblet making tradition. Part of my interest in creating the cloches was the challenge of developing the skill. The other interest was to create a container to hold my “thoughts”. The cloches began as literal containers with literal collections. However, they have evolved into containers that cease to function for that purpose. I became interested in the patterns that are represented on the cloches during a recent trip to India. The Mogul stone screens used in palaces and forts as windows intrigued me. I am interested in them for different reasons. First of all, the patterns are like nothing I had seen before.
Second, the effort to carve them humbles me. The cloches that I currently make are less of a container and more reliquary. The relic they hold is the pattern that is carved on surface.
By carving through the structure of the glass and opening up the interior, the cloche becomes the palace and the pattern retains is original function of acting as a window.
Aaron Boze
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