"Strong, delicate, and drawn to the flame"

Ceramic artist Judd Schiffman on creating "Heir to the Glimmering World"

Judd Schiffman. Photo Sasha Israel.

I first saw Judd Schiffman’s work at ODD-KIN a year ago – an ambitious narrative wall installation of tiles depicting Mothman, a moth-like humanoid first seen in West Virginia in 1966. “The Self That Touches All Edges” shows the cryptid embracing a tree with eyes. The piece suggests a tenderness for life in the face of our fleeting minutes and a changing biosphere. The artist has work in a local exhibition, “Encircled,” right now at Drive-By Projects. His solo show, “Mothman in the Bardo,” runs at Emerson Dorsch gallery in Miami through Nov. 2.

I took Mothman to be an avatar for us humans, and perhaps for the artist himself. Reading what he writes about his creative process, I can see how he would identify with such a creature; his work itself is an amalgam of nature, the mythic dimension, and the soulfulness of knowing life’s richness and brevity. Judd’s work seems to say: Our time is over in a flash, and yet everything we have lived so far colors and shapes the present moment. Eternity is a river where all experience collects. It moves, yet we will always find it in the same place – but deeper, if we look.

“Sometimes I have a dream or an experience, and it takes a couple of years to come out in my ceramic work,” Judd writes. “The framed pieces at Drive-By Projects are an amalgamation of different experiences 20 or 30 years old. Backpacking in the Southwest, going to a funeral in Zimbabwe, and meeting with a therapist in Providence. The works help me to understand vibrant experiences and create a map of them. I think about all these things and make drawings,” which lead to his sculptures.

Here, he details the creation of a Mothman work in the Emerson Dorsch show, “Heir to the Glimmering World.”

Judd writes: