Beneath the Surface

Potter has an enduring story to tell

Gaze at Tim Christensen’s black and white pottery and you first think of Escher.
But Christensen’s work is more than a striking pattern, he is telling a story about the relationship of man to the natural world. Animals, fish and birds cavort and go about the business of survival in designs inscribed through the surface of the glaze when the pot is bone dry.

Christensen was not sure where the iconography came from until he remembered his family trips to Canada and the native Inuit pots his parents purchased. He grew up absorbing, at a core level, the primitive storytelling found on the surface of their pottery.

As Christensen explains, pots are the oldest relics we have of ancient civilizations. He likes the idea that works in clay will endure, to continue to tell stories, unlike floppy disks and memory cards from the last 10 years.

His imagery may evoke an earlier era, but Christensen’s homage to the natural world is an eternal message. As he says, not much has changed in the order of the animal kingdom, except the thin shell man has devised to separate himself.

— Susan Laughlin

Tim Christensen
Fine drawings on porcelain
Rollinsford, (603) 821-4171
www.christensen-kirby.com
Show at SFV Gallery in Rollingsford
September 27 to October 21
www.sfvgallery.com