CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT,
TWO OF THE ‘ARCHITECTURE
FOR SMOKE’ INCENSE BURNERS
BEFORE THEY ARE FIRED; THE
ARTIST IN HIS STUDIO, WITH
SOME OF HIS FIRST CREATIONS,
PLANTERS FOR HIS CACTI
COLLECTION; ONE OF THE
TWO OUTDOOR KILNS‘Anyone who does wood-
firing is probably a bit of a
pyromaniac. You play with
fire for a four-day period’
technique of wood-firing and was encouraged to
develop a more art-based practice.
‘Anyone who does wood-firing is probably a bit of
a pyromaniac,’ he laughs. ‘You play around with fire at
extremely high temperatures for a four-day period.
Gas-firing is still pyromania, but you don’t have to stay
around the kiln the whole time. For wood-firing, you
have to add wood to the kiln every five to ten minutes.’
The wood-firing process is not only labour intensive,
but unpredictable as well. ‘There’s a whole art to
loading and firing the kiln, but there’s always a bit of
randomness that comes with that,’ says Cross. ‘I’m still
learning. I’ve only fired the kiln fewer than 20 times
in the three years I’ve been out here. Each wood creates
different surfaces on the work; the different kinds of
clays that you use change the colour of the ash; the
oxygen levels vary. All of those factors change how the
surface of the work will come out,’ he explains. ‘I invest
a lot of energy in designing the individual pieces. Once
they’re carved, loading them into the kiln breathes
a new life into them and reinvests my interest in the
work. All of a sudden they become a new object through
a process that I don’t have complete control over.’
For Handmade, Cross fired the kiln with cottonwood,
a desert tree, to create the incense burners’ rough, pitted
texture that almost resembles lichen. The burners were
carved from a commercial black clay, mixed with sand
that Cross took from around the workshop, and a white
clay that he makes in the studio. ‘The black clay always
fires so that it looks like old steel or iron, and in other
parts where there’s more ash, it looks like more of a
rusty or mossy accumulation of texture,’ he explains.Weighing in at around 10lbs each, the statuesque
burners feel like they originate from another time.
‘I’m inspired by that whole “a long time ago in a
galaxy far away” kind of historical future,’ says the
artist. ‘I grew up looking at National Geographic and
Jacques Cousteau’s archaeology and then 1980s
post-apocalyptic sci-fi. These elements coalesce in the
work. There’s a modern yet ancient feel in the forms
that suggests a former grandeur, but also a real beauty
developed through time and the erosion of the form.’ ∂
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