Heirloom Seeds
We love discovering new artisans in upstate NY and bringing them into the Beekman 1802 Rural Artist Collective.
Through autumn we are displaying the work of “Horticulture Ceramicist” Michelle Corbett.
In Michelle’s words:
My work is about the celebration of nature and an attempt to embrace her qualities of seduction,
wonderment, and mystery. I am not interested in imitating nature, rather I am interested in
understanding the universal truths and the principles used in nature to recreate my own landscapes, my
own gardens, my own soil.
I think of my pieces as ceramic plants or seeds, things that nurture, have already nurtured or have the
potential to nurture. I am in a sense a ceramic horticulturalist. My goal is to cross-fertilize landscape
and gardens with ceramic forms.
In this series, “Sowing my Seeds” my sculptures are a personal reflection of my own harvest. These
seeds are a visual reminder to me to stay in the present moment….not to drift to the past and not let my
mind get hijacked into the future. Rather, by honoring the creative individual (John Galt), remaining in
a state of stillness…the result is radiant thought. It is here in that moment that nature reveals those
simple gifts of beauty that become my inspiration, my muse, and my joy.
I placed each seed pod on defunct agricultural gears from old farming equipment. Aesthetically, I love
the contrast between organic & industrial forms but furthermore the gears represent our relationship to
plants, the harvest and the tools that bring this abundance to us. In a sense the process that supports our
lives.
We all operate under the same laws of the universe, and we all carry within us an abundance of seeds to
cultivate. Each and everyone of us have seeds of joy, poverty, sorrow, integrity, creativity, success, and
failure etc. We choose which ones we will nurture and harvest. We all sow our own seeds and we are all
responsible for what we sow.
As a visual artist, I believe a voice does not have to be a sound from the mouth. A voice can be a
vibration for the eyes…like a powerful hum of many ocean waves…one after another until the shoreline
is changed.
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See all the works of the B. 1802 Rural Artist Collective in the online Mercantile, click here
