Morro Bay artist Ross Hale speaks of a vision.
He’s walking down a dark city street late at night, when he hears the faint sound of music. It draws him down a stairway, through a door and into a room where an eight-piece jazz band is performing on stage.
Hale offers this vision as context to his most recent artistic endeavor, The Jazz Band.
Forrest L. Doud
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Courtesy of Ross Hale
The collection of eight ceramic sculptures of musicians is on display in the front window of Full Moon Studio and Gallery in Morro Bay, owned by Hale and his wife Hedy. The Jazz Band’s debut this summer was the culmination of two years and nearly 2,000 hours of work. It’s a milestone for Hale as the first time he’s fused his artistic passions of ceramics and jazz.
“This work really pushed my personal limits of… almost 60 years of working in clay. And I found that exciting to be on the edge of the cliff with no safety nets. And then I’m so happy with the way the work came out,” Hale said.
Hale took a risky approach by raku firing his ceramic sculptures. The raku firing technique is unpredictable and can often result in the ceramics being destroyed. When the technique is successful, it removes oxygen from the clay, giving the piece a matte black color, as seen in Hale’s Jazz Band sculptures.
“A lot of people wouldn’t be willing to risk hundreds of hours on firing. And easily, I have seen it often in my career, there’s nothing. You’ve lost it. You just got to get your spirits back together and go for it again,” Hale said.
Even before he began work on the Jazz Band, Hale said he had long wanted to create something that spoke to the themes of technical proficiency and artistic independence in jazz.
“What I wanted to express here in my work was the intensity of concentration it takes to master your instrument. And yet at the same time, there’s a certain freedom that comes once you’re not worried about your instrument,” Hale said.
Aidan Dillon
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Aidan Dillon
Hale also wanted to express his love of jazz with this work. In the 1960s, when many of his peers were listening to rock and roll, Hale bought his first LP, “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis.
“What I always loved was how far they could travel and yet come back to that same melody that we all heard at the very beginning. And it seemed like magic. It still does,” Hale said.
That was in high school, and Hale says he was inspired to begin playing music himself. He picked up the flute and harmonica, just for fun, and still plays alongside friends.
When Hale began working on the Jazz Band, the singer was the first character that formed in his mind. She wears a vibrant, tomato-red dress that separates her from the rest of the band.
“As you look into the background, you see all the other band members contributing and also stars in their own right. And in fact, that was very, very important to me because these people are all just as critical as her, even though she is the star,” Hale said.
With the bulk of the work behind him, Hale is now looking for a new home for the sculptures. He insists on keeping them together as a complete work.
“I don’t want to break the band up. This is a group. It is a single collection. It is a unique moment. Two years in the making, will not be replicated,” Hale said.
Hale said he would like to see the band going on display in a music room, recording studio, or a museum or gallery of jazz.
“I’m most excited to see this band go out and find a larger venue and an audience. And I hope that they will see that love of music, that communication, of love, of music…as they see the pieces in total,” Hale said.
For now, until that new gig emerges, Hale’s Jazz Band will be holding the stage at the Full Moon Gallery in Morro Bay.
Aidan Dillon
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Aidan Dillon
This reporting is made possible by a grant from the Community Foundation, San Luis Obispo County.
