The Electric Light Collection ⚡️
I am truly excited to bring light to my ceramic work with The Electric Light Collection. Born four years ago in collaboration with Robert Lewis, a lighting designer, and one of my oldest and dearest friends who passed in 2021.
People have told me for years that I should make some lighting.
‘It’s easy! And you have the forms already!’
But I did not want to just ‘put a shade on it’ and also, I am not a lighting designer! Have you ever looked at the Grand Brass website?? My eyes cross just thinking about it. And when I did make a few lamp bases they would just sit there on my table for months, waiting for the next step, never to be taken.
Like any new idea, the path appears to be simple and straight forward, but the puzzle remains to be sorted.
So last year, I dove in. What do I want? And it turns out what I want is two-fold. One actually being to ‘put a shade on it’. Classic and handsome Lamps that are dimmable with soft brass hardware and warm natural fabric shades. Earthy, weighted, and textural.
The other lighting I wanted was reminiscent of a Lantern or candle. Ambient light sculptures that sparkle and glow in a dark room. It was Robert’s idea to raise the Lantern from the base, creating both a rooted and uplifted form. A perfect Sagittarius silhouette, Orion shooting for the stars.
Both the Lamps and Lanterns honor the beauty of natural materials and continue the studio process of considered and carefully crafted hand formed and painted ceramics. My hope is to offer functional, modern and tactile lighting that bring comfort, warmth, and ambiance to our homes.
The Stoneware Rock Lamp collection is made of round and domed shaped hand-built rock bases in natural white, painted constellations,
graphic black & white, and a newly introduced deep iron rich clay from Canada.
Shades are available in textured burlap, natural homespun and black linen.
Ambient Lanterns are comprised of stoneware, brass and wood. Round & tapered ceramic lanterns are raised above their base by a brass stem and create light and shadow from star constellation and geometric grid cut outs. Rock shape bases, square or crossed pedestals are available in stoneware and white oak or walnut wood.
All hardware is satin finished brass, and the Lamp are dimmable. Cords are twisted natural fabric, reminiscent of the hemp rope used in my ongoing collection of bells and wall hangings.
VISION “is sometimes a terrible thing. Ideas are easy to come by, they spring effortlessly out of the vacuity of the mind and cost nothing. When they are held and projected onto one’s self or others they become a project. When the project is enacted it becomes the work, and when the work is completed it appears to be self-existent. Creation is the process of form manifesting from emptiness, where that which arises from the mind comes into existence. Yet the distance between conception and realization may be enormous, as vast as the distance between stars” ROBERT BEER
