Blooming from Still Water

In Persian and Anatolian traditions alike, the lotus does not simply grow; it ascends. Rooted in mud, it opens to air and light without carrying the mud with it. This piece began as a single slab of white clay, coaxed into the ruffle of opening petals, then edged in gold luster fired to echo illuminated manuscript borders. The deep royal blue of the velvet backing is the color of the sky just before the first star appears, a moment that has no name in most languages but is recognised in the body. Against that ground, the white form casts a soft, shifting shadow that changes as the room's light moves through the day. Housed in a gold shadow-box frame, the ceramic becomes neither purely sculpture nor purely painting. It occupies the threshold between the two, the same threshold the lotus itself occupies between water and air.