Passing Permitted.

In my work as a potter I have had several opportunities to craft urns for families wishing to honour their departed loved ones. A recent commission had me creating an urn that would be large enough to contain the ashes of both wife and husband. As this was a commission for a couple who were both still living, I asked pointedly if they were “planning” to depart together. This, other conversations and recent urn commissions started this arc of my creative journey. During the days of extreme lockdown, as again my awareness of illness and death heightened, I began to contemplate the various departures routes we as humanity might “take”. This piece had me exploring accidental highway deaths. The use of a road sign, originally purposed to be an indicator of safety, and turned into a vessel to carry the ashes of a loss that I imagined as resulting from undue care and attention, resonated within me in this time when the day-to-day, my actions and activities, things I once perceived as safe, are now implicated as possible routes to my demise, causing me examine the validity of my own cultural and personal road signs.