BURNT OFFERINGS

For some of my recent works, I have chosen to complete the process by burning both the surface and the interior, creating a raw and dramatic presence. These are pieces that had been set aside over the past two years, deemed incomplete, flawed, and, at the time, unworthy of my original aesthetic vision. They were left in limbo, a silent inventory of failed intentions, carrying the weight of lost effort and unrealized potential.

This final act of burning is more than a finishing technique; it is an acknowledgment, a reckoning. It speaks of defeat, but also of an acceptance that is not passive resignation, but rather an understanding of inevitability. The fire is both destroyer and purifier, consuming what was and revealing something truer beneath. The act itself has become a ritual, an intimate confrontation with loss, where destruction is not an end but a transformation.

Each of these pieces bears the scars of time and circumstance. Most were marred by a single, fateful event, an unforeseen gust of wind, striking overnight, warping the blanks just as they were being prepared for the lathe. I knew the risks; I knew what would come of them. And yet, something within me refused to turn away. I followed the impulse that urged me forward, shaping them despite their flaws, allowing fate to leave its unpredictable imprint on my work.

Now, through fire, I seal that journey. The frustration, the resistance, the lingering doubt, each of these is relinquished to the flames. What once seemed ruined is now sanctified by its imperfections, made resilient through destruction. In this ritual, there is both surrender and defiance, a final offering to the forces that shape my work as much as my own hands do.