Image courtesy Art Zone and photographer Jake Walker
Sam Duckor-Jones, Born Wellington, 1982.
I try to tell small stories by sending out into the world characters at once heavy with my own fears and buoyant with dreamed-of accomplishments. So the work is personal and most often stands with one foot glittering proudly in the camp of immense joy and the other, damp and blistered, in some place of ill repute. Vessels for such storytelling have included puppetry, poetry, drawing, music. But today the vessel is clay.
Clay is a wonderful medium and friend. Perhaps because before becoming a new sculpture, clay passes through a number of familiar conditions: cold mud, deliciously messy, full of promise, but without patience - heartbreaking; soon (depending on the weather), fragile as eggshell and capable of generating dangerous dusts; later - hot, glowing orange or yellow and prone to exploding; and finally, strong, permanent, and definite.
I work in the spare bedroom of my home in Featherston.
Text courtesy of Bowen Galleries 1998 - 2016