"One day while using a funnel to fuel up my Coleman cook stove I noticed that the funnel possessed a beautiful shape.  As a formal shape it is not designed to have a specific top or bottom. Various associations can be made with the form depending on its positioning.  Of course, with one position there is the association to domestic function, but in another position the basic elements in the shape relate to formal sculpture, and in another to architecture with impressions of psychological interiors.  The funnel functions as a means to focus material and to allow passage.  It is symbolic of the idea of life passage where one can pass through an event and become transformed with inner essence unchanged.

In many ways the current work reflects ongoing sculptural concerns, but its content is driven by my obsession with the idea of the performance of objects and their link to the domain of function distinguishing craft from art.  The Zen Pot Holders is an elaboration of the idea associated with an earlier piece titled Watching Burning Toast.  WBT was an attempt to express the phenomenon of zoning out and by doing so (as it was pointed out to me) I accidentally made a Zen Pot.  The Zen Pot Holders are a comment on the order of form and function."

Jim Thomson
March 2001