Steve Slatin on wed 14 jan 04
was Uranium in Fiesta War - and as to the 'when' of it...
I'm probably just adding fuel (heh, heh) to the fire here,
but I found a reference to James Acord, the "Atomic Artist"
of Hanford, WA (there was a New Yorker piece about him a
decade back; couldn't locate it).
The ref is http://www2.ans.org/pubs/magazines/nn/pdfs/2002-11-3.pdf
-- and it's an article from "Nuclear News" which is a
standard industry publication, and not an arts journal.
When I first heard of him I presumed his work was so
much "horse hocky"* but when I read the piece on him I was
quite impressed with his ideas.
The few images of his work I've seen have been quite captivating,
but you do need to read the description to really get what
they are, generally. The reliquaries (one shown in the ref'd piece)
are not. They have an implicit message that gets right through.
The visceral fear of radiation reflected in this thread is
the thing his work taps into. Edouard B. recently posted
something confirming what Hal and I have referred to -- the
safety issue is metal toxicity, not radiation. Materials
handling protocols are a weak spot for many potters. We
should know better. We should handle materials more carefully.
Sand is pretty near inert, and silicosis has probably killed
more potters over the centuries than anything else.
-- Steve S.
*Please note I *didn't* take a cheap shot and mention elephants!
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