Burnt Baby Cannon

The “Mad Potter of Biloxi”, George Ohr [1857-1918] was an American ceramicist celebrated from his freely expressive and experimental clay forms — prefiguring the modern Abstract-Expressionist movement with his strange and loose understandings of clay.  ‘Burnt Baby Cannon’ dumps functionality for a fascinating sculptural form, scaling down the body and appendages of the cannon to a strange, seemingly idle miniature now solely existent in the symbolic realm. Ohr’s use of particularly craggy and gritty clay (usually locally sourced from the Tchoutacabuffa river) lends a significant and effete textural depth, suggesting decay and the obsolete.