Inge Roberts

I am drawn to the ancient buildings and sites
of those who came before, whose imprints
litter the centuries, linking us together.  I trace
those links when I travel: pressing wet clay
against walls, onto floors, furniture, doorknobs,
eroded statuary details, and cemetery
sculptures.  These are small witnesses, easily
eroded by more time, unlikely to be lifted into
anyone’s focus. I use these molds in fragmented
and distorted forms.
My work is stamped and patched
with symbols of ancient worship, sacred
and secular texts, frivolous and earnest
Gallo-Roman images, medieval symbols, the
hands, faces, and feet of Renaissance royalty,
Viking warriors, and monks.
These tailings become the words in the
stories my pieces tell, used gratefully and
sometimes not without hesitation. My
intention is to honor those forgotten artists.
When I attach the impressions from a clay
cylinder, made more than 5,000 years ago in
the “cradle of civilization”, to a bowl made by
me today in America, using a porcelain body
mined in Europe, (which I may texture with
a basket woven two generations ago on yet
another continent) I feel suspended between
their makers and reach out to connect them.