‘Lithified II’

Patricia Millar vessels celebrates form, colour and texture of their geological and anthropological origins. These archaic ceramics inspire not only form but the methods by which she works.

Lithified II is a collection of local ice age clays, sediments, glaciated and sea-worn Silurian bedrock, limestone and sandstone gravels from Strangford Lough, County Down. This narrow body of seawater has undergone huge geological episodes.

This piece references the landscape beneath the surface, revealing the past sediments laid down over thousands and millions of years. Each layer once had its own landscape, weather, inhabitants as the position, of where we call home today, drifted from the Equator northwards.

Pathways fits nicely with the meaning of the work- each layer has at some point been a surface. Evidence of fossils and foot prints of ancient dinosaurs have been found. Hunter gatherers made the Lough their home, leaving worked flints and mussel shell middens. Traces of the ancient once walked on these surfaces, leaving faint traces of familiar life, traveling on foot, eating, making, mark making, inhabiting, dying. Just as they did in the distant past, our lives still intersect and follow their pathways. What traces will we leave on this surface?

Materials: Stoneware with local clays and gravels; dimensions: H53 x W33 cm