Recently I've taken to going down to the lake, gathering the stones and gravel on the shore and mixing these into large balls of clay. I then throw them on the wheel.

When you throw a pot, you first center the clay to the wheel. You then insert your thumb into the middle of the mass and, pushing out, begin to raise the walls of your vessel. The clay I’m using has no uniformity. As I push out from the center the larger stones bulge and the whole soon loses all symmetry, but the interior form, the void that develops from my pushing out, remains true.

Into this interior void I now place a smaller ball of just clay—clay without any of the lakeside additives—and throw this ball into my first. I raise the whole into a pot.

As the pot dries, and even more so when it is fired, the clay tends to shrink from the stone forming cracks and ruptures. Almost immediately from the kiln the exterior begins to break and crumble, but it is my hope that, when I have done my work well, there is an interior form that will remain.

Into these pots, I plant trees. I am a bonsai enthusiast.

There you have it, a crumbling pot that I expect will, in time, deteriorate more apace, with an interior form that I hope will retain its integrity. It holds the abiding tree.

In my experience, human endeavor by its nature is metaphor.