Night Vessels is a series of work I started in 2006, while living in New Orleans. Flood, fire, arson, betrayal, the murder of a friend, thievery, loss of job,loss of home, bankruptcy, penury. Loss of self was next if not for my aunt, who gave me money for clay and a desk to work. Many of the pieces in this series came from my rage over what had happened. They have titles like "Retribution" and "Coward." My feelings were necessarily, well, dark- and complicated. In later pieces, however, looking back I can see a second group emerge. Images of figures waiting to wake from slumber, some beginning to break free of their bindings. Others were dreaming, or in the process of becoming something else. Here is the darker grouping of the Night Vessels, subtitled "Enflamed." In the previous project I have organized the less angry pieces, subtitled "Gentler Grouping."