Inspirations

The original inspiration for this body of work came about on a tour of a porcelain history museum in Jingdezhen, China in the summer of 2004. Our tour group was treated to a performance of various Chinese folk songs performed by a group of young Chinese girls on all porcelain instruments: gongs, chimes, drums, and some that defied description. That performance opened my eyes to the range of sounds possible from ceramic materials, and I began to think about making my own at some point.

Next was seeing some ceramic drums called Udus that made a range of interesting sounds when slapped with the palm. This enticed me to try making my own, with various amounts of success.

The thing that really put it all in motion was the opportunity to have an exhibition at the college where I teach. I decided at that point to devote my energy over the summer to creating a new body of work that would stimulate the eye through the visual form, stimulate the hand through variations of the texture, and stimulate the ear through variations in the sounds made by the pieces.

A big inspiration early on in the process was reading the book by Oliver Sacks titled Musiciphilia. This was a real eye opener for me to the power that sound has on our brains and bodies. His book traces his own development of the thesis that sounds in general, and music in particular cause very unusual and fascinating responses in our brains. As a doctor, Sacks has encountered many cases himself where a person afflicted with some neurological disorder such as Parkinsons, shows remarkable changes in their symptoms, improvements in their emotional responses, improvements in their ability to control their bodies, simply by listening to music. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

I had several discussions with my colleagues at PVCC about this topic that helped me a lot. Dr. Brett Reed is a musician as well as music faculty who gave me encouragement and direction. Dr. Christopher Scinto is also and accomplished musician, faculty and division chair of the Fine & Performing Arts at PVCC. He also provided encouragement and direction.

Among other things, Drs. Reed and Scinto mentioned Harry Partch as one I should look up. He was a musician, composer and instrument builder through the mid- late 20th century who rebelled against the traditional tuning used by western musicians as too limiting, and developed alternative tunings that filled in the spaces between notes with "microtunings". This allowed Partch and his followers to create music that more exactly coincided with the sounds in human speech than traditional tuning allowed. Here is a link to more information on Harry Partch. And here is a link to a Youtube video of Partch performing his compositions on instruments he designed and built.

Last year, I purchased a book by Barry Hall, titled "From Mud to Music" that was a valuable resource through this journey. This book focuses on ceramic musical instruments from around the world.