Josh Latkin

Materials, both natural and manmade ones, and their uses, have always interested me. I love building things, sometimes more to work with the materials and see how their natural properties are used, than the need for a structure. This is also one of the main reasons for my gardening and the growing trees in my orchard, is to create and live with the structures that are functional and come out of this work. The structure of a tree that was started from a single bud, the neat box of apples that nature engineered, or the way rows in the garden must be built to be successful in ways that work with nature instead of fighting against it.

I find it fascinating the way engineering progresses in both structures made by people and natural ones and how people are more and more able to understand natural structures and processes, work with them and put them to use.

My father has always been a great resource, helping me learn the properties of materials and also how to test and research them, and now my son, who is an Aeronautical Engineer, helps me with the mathematics required to accurately assemble some of the ceramic pieces I build. My current pieces are constructed with slabs of clay. Part of my ability to construct these pieces came from finding a way to have gravity and other natural forces work for me in the assembly and finishing of these pieces.

Much of the inspiration for my current ceramic work comes from food service and storage. My wife, daughter, and myself, have always worked hard together to produce, and have fun with food, both for the taste and visual aspects. Some of my works are just my ideas of, for example, what a serving dish could be, or how a pastry might be presented. Some are inspired by classic storage and serving vessels, others are inspired by some of the earliest food storage pots made in Central America, or a granary built in North America thousands of years ago, and how it was constructed to keep rodents out.

Some of the pieces are just wild inspiration, although they may or may not have some use, they can sometimes just be art for the heck of it. After all, the limits of art are like the limits of the universe, not a boundary out there somewhere, but only restricted by the limits of a finite mind.