Wayne Higby - EarthCloud

Wayne Higby installed EarthCloud in the richly endowed Miller Performing Arts Center at Alfred University in western New York state. It took four years to create EarthCloud, which is the largest installation in porcelain worldwide. The work embodies the idea of an ethereal fusion of earth, sky and architecture that is to be sensorily appreciated. The work stands 9 m high, is 17 m wide and incorporates over 6,000 individual elements, each measuring about 20 x 18 cm. Higby formed all those elements, using 18 tonnes of porcelain paste to do so and each is a one-off. All porcelain elements boast a celadon glaze and were muffle-fired at 1300 Degrees C. Wayne Higby is one of the most important and influential contemporary artists working in ceramics. Especially acclaimed for his interpretations of landscape, he has been a professor at Alfred University since 1973. Higby has worked geography, geology and the atmospheric light qualities of his immediate environment into EarthCloud."Earth, of course, is the drama of material, weight, gravity - the tactile, the sensual matrix of human life. We are of the earth and are bound by our bodies as products of nature revealed in the phenomena of the physical universe. Yet, we are also of the transcendent - the purely imagined possibility of mind, of spirit. We are EarthCloud." (Wayne Higby, 2007)Text in English and German.