Russell Hackney - Ceramic Art
Bowen Island, BC

CORD Series

The CORD series  was conceived between hospice visits to my mother in the UK over a period of three months at the beginning of 2024. The making of them was a meditative process  - a kind of therapy: ‘when the hands are busy the mind can rest’, an approach that was helpful to me. I liked that the misshapenness paralleled the time that I was living in. They were conceived in clay before they were modelled in plaster. A feel and touch response dictated the object rather than design or an articulated vision. There were no drawings and no layout, I was guided only by what ‘felt right’. As I worked the clay and then the plaster I began to be drawn to the vein-like lines that were emerging. These were at first not defined or emphasized but became important as I began to think that they represented some part of the attachment to my mother and her leaving.