What is Steampunk?
A friend of mine asked me “What is Steampunk and what’s with the goggles?”
There is no one answer to that question, but here is mine. Steampunk is an artistic genre that everything else is not. With shades of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, it has been described as retro-futuristic, science fiction, neo-Victorian, 19th century industrial, and post-apocalyptic. Hard to imagine? The Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is a good example of Steampunk. It includes endeavors in art, music, literature, fashion, and culture. Many art objects incorporate elements of redesign, re-use, rebuild; taking items and making something completely different and new.
What attracted me to Steampunk and ceramics is that it allows me to use my creativity and imagination, going in directions other art forms wouldn’t allow. Trying to avoid the cliché of ‘everything with gears’, my Steampunk Pottery consists of ceramics objects (some functional, some not) with bolts and screws and rivets, and some with vacuum tubes and light bulbs from a pre-digital age.
As to the googles, it’s terribly bright outside.