SCRATYR JASON LLOYD BROWN

These vessels are not simply pots—they are guardians. They are spells in stoneware, teeth and eyes turned outward to watch, to ward, to whisper of things forgotten. Coiled around their necks are serpents, their spines glazed and glistening, their bodies encircling like old protectors. Every vessel bears a face, a skull, a gaze-not as portraiture, but as an invocation of older truths, of the deep and wild parts of ourselves that have always resisted domestication.

My practice begins with my bare feet in the dirt. These works are built on a Tennessee kick wheel, spun by my own legs, formed with handmade clays that carry the fingerprints of ridge and river. I sit barefoot at the wheel not as a performance, but as a grounding. In an age of hyper-disconnection, this is return-work: returning to mud, to touch, to the circular breath of the wheel and fire. This is Appalachian work—not in nostalgia, but in survivance-honoring the wild lines of horn and beard, the protective curl of snake, and the all-seeing eye that watches through the leaves.

Apotropaic eyes, so common in ancient worlds, have become central to my sculptural vocabulary. They do not dominate, but defend. They do not command, but witness. In my vessels, the eye is an invitation to presence—-presence with the object, with the landscape, and with the wildness that lives within us despite the cages of modern life. Snakes appear because they are our oldest neighbors: misunderstood, powerful, necessary. I call them to my vessels to remind us of what it means to guard, to be coiled close to life, to move without apology.

Each jug, each jug-face, each watching skull is part of a living dialect between folk memory and the contemporary body. Between the survival of place and the insistence of self. This is an ongoing conversation between Appalachian root traditions and the vital, unruly spirit that refuses to be polished or corrected. These forms do not tame the wild-they hold it, protect it, and celebrate its rightful place in mountain culture.