1 of 1 | Paul Henry Devoti — Atlantis Studio, my studio home in the pueblo of San Juan de Oriente, Nicaragua
The Aztec priests who mapped the 20-day calendar were doing what all great navigators do: reading the night sky. Night Sky Ride is the vessel that carries you through it.
The clay is black burnished — fired to a deep, dense darkness that absorbs light the way the night sky absorbs everything. Into that black surface, Paul Henry Devoti has etched a world: significant sgraffito work covering the entire form in multiple textures and registers, each zone of carving creating a different quality of the night — dotted like stars, striped like cosmic wind, cross-hatched like the woven mathematics of the ancient calendar.
The journey begins at the base with a true starfield — scattered dots holding the Aztec day symbols in their smallest, most intimate form, glowing in teal, orange, pink and gold like constellations just becoming visible. As the eye moves upward, the symbols grow and transform — textures shifting from fine to bold, individual symbols giving way to large geometric forms and cosmic sweeps of energy. By the time the gaze reaches the upper register, the night sky has become a full cosmological event, blazing against the black like the aurora made ceramic.
The post-fired metallic pigments do something on black burnished clay that they cannot do on any other surface. They glow. They vibrate. They make the ancient symbols look like they are transmitting.
This is what the night sky looks like when you know how to read it.
Dimensions: 9 × 7 × 7 inches
Medium: Ceramic with black burnished clay, extensive multi-texture sgraffito etching, and contemporary metallic pigment
Origin: Atlantis Studio — studio home of Paul Henry Devoti, pueblo of San Juan de Oriente, Nicaragua
Edition: 1 of 1
