Sun
Presence
Sun explores Presence through brightness, directness, color, and the outward movement of light and heat.
The Sun suggested Presence to me almost immediately. Its brightness makes it impossible to ignore. It demands the now. When sculpting the Sun's face, I wanted an expression that felt equally direct: open, energetic, and frank, with nothing hidden behind it. I also decided against the familiar image of rays shooting outward from the Sun. Instead, I wanted the movement of the mosaic itself to convey its energy.
The progression can suggest other familiar color systems—the light spectrum, the chakra system, even the rainbow flag—but those weren't my starting point. I was thinking about the changing colors of sunlight and about heat dissipating as energy moves outward.
The direction of the hand-cut tesserae carries that movement outward. By the outer edge, the colors have cooled and darkened into the surrounding space.
When White Became Orange
I originally imagined Sun with a pale, almost white face. I was thinking about white heat and wanted the face itself to suggest that intensity.
But ceramic glazes can change considerably during firing, and when Sun came out of the kiln, surprise!—the face was peachy orange(ish).
I was disappointed. It wasn't what I'd envisioned, and for a while I considered sculpting Sun again. But I kept looking at it. The orange began to feel less like something that had gone wrong and more like something I needed to pay attention to. Then one day I looked up at the actual Sun and saw its orange face staring back at me.
Following the Heat
Accepting the orange face affected what happened next. I used it as the starting point for the surrounding mosaic. Warm yellows, oranges, reds, and pinks move outward from the face before giving way to cooler colors farther from the center.
What Changed
I began Sun thinking about Presence primarily in terms of brightness: something so unmistakably there that it commands attention.
As I made the piece, I began to see Presence differently. What interested me wasn't simply the Sun's brightness, but the fact that it doesn't have to do anything to establish its presence. Its energy is simply there.
That shifted my exploration of Presence from doing to being.