All in the Same Boat - Tong'zhou Gong'ji 同舟共济

All in the Same Boat :: Tong'zhou Gong'ji

同舟共济

Each figure in this project is hand sculpted, made from stoneware or porcelain clay, kiln fired in various methods to produce a range of tones. The first 50 gathered in two symbolic clay boats on the Wellfleet Harbor. They were then dispersed through the City of Cambridge CSA (community supported art) Program. Each recipient of a head receives a composite image of portraits of all fifty; this brings attention to the uniqueness of each as well as creates the feeling of being part of a greater whole. 

Rising tides, immigration, refugees, climate change, the need to realize our common issues – the “Same Boat” metaphor evokes many current and resonant meanings. 

The second iteration was commissioned for the new lobby of SJTU-ICCI, the Institute for Culture and Creative Industry at Shanghai Jiaotong University in Shanghai, China. The scope of this project is 120 heads mounted on a 4 meter long wall hung rich yellow boat, currently in the installation phase. I have only a few snapshots so far. For this project, I guided graduate students, staff and faculty of the college in the making of about 1/3 of the sculptures included in this project, creating a sense of ownership and creative community. 

The title in Chinese, Tong’zhou Gong’ji , is a traditional four character phrase (cheng’yu) that translates to all in the same boat, with a hopeful tone of pulling together to get the other side of the river, less ominous than the English usage.  Interactive videos of birds in the sky and rippling water will be projected above and below the boat. 

One selection of pieces was gifted to the school, another group of “travelers” came to America with me to find new homes in future pieces. American clay and Chinese clay are meeting, finding cultural commonalities.

In the next year, 2019, I worked with ESOL students and other non-native English speaking groups to make heads. We touched on languages of sculpture, anatomy, clay and the conversation about the commonality of humanity and the theme of working together in community. Then covid19 hit and we were indeed all in the same boat.  I began to make small boats as we all were adrift in our isolation.

Working with ESOL students at the Cambridge Learning Center in 2019

The project hopes to revive in 2024 with the Chinese American Association of Cambridge and the Foundry, out new cultural venue. 

Christopher Volpe and Judith Motzkin at Castle Hill Truro Center for the Arts

Chris and I installed our show yesterday and we are pleased with the way our works meet. Opening Reception is Thursday 4-6. Truro Center for the Arts @CastleHill
Chris is showing Westerlies, a series of seascapes in oil paints and tar. 

The pieces in my installation, Gather and Sort, are made of clay, vintage scientific slide boxes and digital images. Pot shards, an inevitable and often discarded product of making pots, are tumbled with sand and water into smooth round forms, imitating geologic processes of weathering and erosion. Assembled over years, they are presented here in various states of chaos and imposed order, making reference to the persistence of pottery in human and archeologic history and the scientific practices of taxonomic organization.


The work speaks to the way we select, gather and make order and use of that which is collected. A stone is placed for the dead, a cairn to mark direction, a “sekimori-ishi” at the entrance to a meditation space of solitude. Just as we share the impulse to pick out stones on the beach, we are impelled to touch these curious objects. Please do.

“A Taxonomy of Sorts” comes from this natural impulse and the action of sorting these objects in the studio, giving them context. The work “...plays with the conventions of taxonomic cataloguing and storage in the natural sciences.”  In the work they “look like they’ve been sorted according to some kind of taxonomic logic, but in fact, they have been sorted by a shifting, undependable logic that is neither chance – decisions are specific and particular – nor rigor.”

“Stone Flow” refers to archaeological time and the slow movement of material from the earth, through the hand of the potter and back to the earth. As more work is made, more pots are lost in process, and more shards are added to create new iterations of this long term project. 

Appearances 2017 GypsyGather

Last summer we lived with and learned the life cycle of the gypsy moths that invaded our woods. The piece I installed today around a lone tree in Dunes Edge Campground for Appearances Provincetown is an abstraction of all the stages--larva, pupae, fluttering males and  females born unable to fly, heavy with eggs. The materials are ceramic, mostly off-casts gathered to recycled from another project and mylar, which if the rainstorm tomorrow  doesn't bring it all down, will survive to catch your eye with fluttering light catching movement.