PHORAE
artifacts for a mythology that does not yet exist

The Phorae take their ceremonial logic from the Jomon-period dogu. Dogu were ritual objects first, decorative second, made to be handled with intention. That same priority runs through this series, continuing the ceremonial-reliquary line started with the Moonpots.

The forms themselves reference nothing living on this planet. Every structure — the clustered tubules, the split and swollen segmented structures, the blade-like protrusions, the appendages that read as feeding, breathing, or reaching — is pulled from memory rather than observation: creatures that exist only as something half-recalled, re-presented from the perspective of a biology that might exist on another Earth. The surface markings compound that distance. They're an alien symbology that delineates it — at once organic, primitive and extraterrestrial, closer to star-charts from a galaxy with no name than to any earthly ornament. You aren’t meant to translate them. You are meant to recognize that they mean something, in the way you'd recognize writing in a language you've never seen.

Hand-built and engineered in slab-constructed stoneware in 2 colors, fired cone 5–6 oxidation. Exteriors are left largely naked — unglazed, engobe-washed over hand-incised marking, with a soft, toothy "sharkskin" surface. Interiors are glazed and sealed beneath a tight-fitting lid; only the finials are turned on a wheel.

Kristin Kest Fine Art, Illustration, and Ceramics

A working artist living in the beautiful Susquehanna Valley of York, PA