Helen Shanks – an archaeological sensibility

Helen has just launched her web site – http://helenshanks.com Ceramics connecting quiddities, material engagement, deep history, hylography, the skeuomorph – the life of things – see some recent comments – [Link] [Link]

hylography – terra sigillata

Hylography – the process of emergence and disappearance, intentional or unintentional, of graphical form out of matter – [Link] Here in a work by Helen (Shanks). The technique is terra sigillata – employing a fine slip applied to the surface and manipulated in firing to various effect. In antiquity the results were fine and very…

twelve years on

For twelve years and more I have been visiting a tree, every month or six weeks. And taking photographs – every one quite different. [Link] [Link] An apple tree in Anderson Valley in northern California, and a legacy of an old agricultural industry going back to the 1850s or 60s, now eclipsed by the grape….

chorography – media materialities

Gallery – [water pigment paper] Working on my text accompaniment to the guide to Paul Noble’s art work, on display currently at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, has had me reflecting again on just how we might describe an encounter, in this case with a world of the imagination, a curiously enigmatic cosmopolis. (As an archaeologist…