SentIent Head I

Stoneware clay, Kanthal A1 wire, linen gauze, clay slip, h,498mm

Poised between awareness & sleep. A figure of interiority & unfinished thought.

A head bound in a lattice of wire and ash. The surface is not decorative, but scarred — blackened, caked, dusted. The face is closed. Not in rest, but in quiet refusal. This is not peace. This is waiting.

An intersecting filamentous frame surrounds the head, joining the gauze-like halo at its edges. Not a wound, but a measurement. A scaffold. As though the form is still under revision — an unfinished diagram of sentience. The framing structure holds the figure in tension, not in support.

The closed eyes suggest no sleep. They are not blind, but turned inward. Listening. Withholding. The mouth is sealed as if it never learned speech. Or had speech taken from it.

There is no evident gender. The features resist classification — arched yet strong, soft yet sealed. The head offers no narrative, only a presence. It sits between categories. Neither icon nor body. Not yet relic, not quite being.

A prototype of feeling. A diagram of containment. A presence without instruction.