Liminal Artifacts

There exists a profound relationship between human perception and the recognition of faces in our surroundings. The pareidolic tendency—seeing faces in random patterns, wood grain, clouds, or stone formations—represents not merely a cognitive quirk but perhaps one of our most primal interpretive impulses. When one works with clay harvested directly from forgotten deposits in Lower Austria, one engages in a dialogue that transcends temporal boundaries.

These masks emerge from an intuitive process, a translation of patterns recognized in nature into three-dimensional forms. The creative act becomes almost compulsory—a necessary externalization of internal recognition. The raw, unrefined clay, with its inherent memory of geological time, provides resistance and collaboration simultaneously.

What makes this practice particularly resonant in our current moment is its relationship to contemporary digital artifacts. The masks reflect an interesting parallel to AI-generated imagery, particularly those early iterations that, when prompted to shift from square formats to landscape or portrait orientations, produced doubling effects—dual heads, multiple eyes, twinned mouths. These digital glitches reveal the underlying structures and limitations of our technological tools.

By working with clay to interpret both natural patterns and digital anomalies, one engages in a form of translation across mediums. These ceramic faces bridge the ancient practice of mask-making with contemporary questions about representation and interpretation. The rapid, intuitive forming process preserves something of the initial recognition—the moment when random elements suddenly organize themselves into something with apparent meaning.

This practice isn't about appropriating cultural forms, but rather explores the universal human tendency to recognize ourselves in our surroundings—an exploration of how perception itself functions. The faces that emerge in the clay speak to something fundamental about human cognition and our need to externalize internal patterns of recognition.

The masks exist in various states through their creation process—from raw earth to bisque-fired objects to their final form. This transformation mirrors our own perceptual process: from chaotic impressions to meaningful forms. They stand as physical manifestations of the moment when chaos becomes order, when random elements arrange themselves into meaning, and when the boundary between perceiver and perceived momentarily dissolves.