Iris Moore

The Guest Pots were created at various studios while travelling from Illinois to California. As a guest in each studio I fabricated, fired, glazed and constructed pots. Thank you to all the studios.

What Goes Around Comes Around is a group of 26 serving bowls made from a mold from a compost pile at Angelic Organics Farm, Caledonia Illinois. They were used to serve at their annual harvest meal and auctioned off as a fundraiser for their learning center.

The Five Sainted Hooves are in honor of the agricultural animals who have changed the face of the earth, fed, clothed and housed humans and thrown their lot in with ours for better and worse.

In addition to Goat(Glory), Cow(Victor,Victor’s Ghost and Victor’s Other Ghost),Donkey,Horse and Sheep(images pending) a sixth piece is added to this group, Oracle.

Natural perfumers are always looking for a humane animalic note for their work. The process of collecting the goat buck scent is benign, sweet even, rubbing the base of his horns and top of his head.

The Addam Project evolved from the amazing scent of a La Mancha buck from Angelic Organics Farm. A tincture of his smell became an ingredient in the basenote of my perfume called “La Mancha”. An opening note of cedar and pink pepper, followed by cognac, cardomon and ambrette, a base of Frankincense and African stone, fixed and exhalted by the Addam tincture; stands in for the multitude of myths and legends concerning the taming of the wild sexy beast. Despite my obsessive efforts I have never been able to duplicate that original tincture.

The horsehair baskets were a problem I set for myself, to make things of free materials and without tools. The idealism of this approach quickly evaporated, of course, and fostered research of the chain of supply and labor.

The vessels themselves barely describe the boundary between inside and out. Containment and measurement of volume becomes progressively impossible as the vessels become more permeable.

I am lucky to live near farmers in Northern California and have been the lucky recipient of fleeces from a variety of sheep and a pygora goat. Although I am nowhere near the spinners I’ve met I have processed the wool, dyed it with my garden grown materials, plus cochineal and logwood, spun it on a drop spindle and made hats for my friends and family.

The base material for my needle felted images is made from “junk” wool collected during shearing and Dorset wool, concidered unusable in the fine craft world.

These paintings on silk are inspired by the animals I see every day on Mt. Diablo in Northern California.

Included here are scarves with paintings of water. Living near an arroyo is a constant negotiation with water as it goes through a yearly cycle of flooding and drying up.

Also a random silk painting titled “Chicken Foot Constellation”.

These are needlefelted on a wet felted ground. Oranges and yellows are dyed from my garden grown flowers, reds and purples from cochineal and logwood. The wool is sourced from my neighbors.

The imagery references European medieval marginalia, Japanese ghost stories.

Just a reminder to thank your meal.