Patricia Gay
Medium: Ceramic stoneware, high fire glaze, 11 kt. gold
Date created: March, 2009
Dream Text: 2/25/08
I am alone and looking across a bare room at a doorway that is in the middle of a bare wall. Only that area of the adjoining room that is immediately across the threshold is visible to me. As I am looking at the opening a handsome young man enters the adjacent room and stands just on the other side of the doorway, and is centered in it. Because he is looking straight ahead I am viewing him in profile. He stands motionless and looking into the distance.
In an instant all of his clothes disappear, he is still and nude. To my surprise he is tattooed from his collarbone to his wrists and ankles. The tattoo is as shocking as it is exquisite. Shocking because when clothed there was no imagining the complexity that was hidden underneath, no way that I would have guessed that these beautiful patterns existed under his clothes. The tribal tattoo is magnificent and it flows gracefully and in harmony with the contours of his body. The tattoo is so compelling that I know it has its own soul, its own life. After a allowing me a moment to witness his reveal, he walks forward and out of my view.
Title of Work: Lady Day's Meditation on Power
Medium: Ceramic stoneware, oxide, high fire glaze, low fire glaze
Date Created: 5/18/09
Dream Text: 5/17/09
Lady Day's man is in the front row of the club wearing an expensive and beautifully designed ruffled yellow shirt made of fine French silk. I am surprised to find that yellow silk ruffles have a fragrance, and it is not a cologne. It possesses its own scent, as if it is a living object.
Looking like a rare rain forest blossom sitting in a chair, he turns around and shares his weed with everyone. As the crowd lights up the marijuana the club is filled with the sweet smell of anise. I ask his name and he says that I must promise to keep it a secret for it to maintain its power. I agree to the secret, he leans over and whispers that his name is, "Honey Dripper."
Billie Holiday slowly walks to center stage, and the club is dark except for the spotlight illuminating her. Her lime green charmeuse silk gown is full length and it has on its own distinct fragrance, as her man's shirt does, but her gown's fragrance is intensely sensual and seductive. I am fascinated that her gown is alive and I wonder if it is actually a variety of an exotic flower that Billie has cultivated for herself.
Billie's man says her power depends on her ability to make other people powerful. Lady Day is walking through the audience and asks us, "Who am I being that you are not powerfully happy and potent healers?"
Title of Work: Coltrane's Prayer
Medium: Ceramic stoneware, high fire glaze, palladium glaze
Date created: 8/2/09
Dream Text: 7/22/09
Coltrane's Prayer
A tall, thin, and beautifully dressed woman arrives at the jazz club where I am working the front door. She takes a seat at a small round table in the very front row. The room around her is completely dark, and although I cannot see anyone else in the club I know the room is full. John Coltrane and his band are on stage and with his eyed closed he tenderly, yet passionately, plays his classic prayer "Dear Lord" on his tenor sax. He is standing center stage, slightly in front of the other members of the band, and is directly in front of this woman. As she gazes at him adoringly, the music flows out of his sax and it drapes over her as a floating embrace, beginning at the top of her head and flows gently over her entire body. As the prayer envelops her body each musical phrase takes on a unique form and rhythm as it glides across her. She meditates on Coltrane's brilliance. I glide through the room feeling the music of the piano deep inside my soul. I sit on the piano bench next to McCoy Tyner and I watch him play so intensely that the piano falls apart, but the music continues with a life of its own from the pile of rubble.
Images may not be used, copied, transmitted or reproduced in whole or in part in any form
nor may they or any part of them be stored in a retrieval system of any nature
without written permission from the individual artist.