Ben Gufford Ceramics

10/10/2026

I am still “reeling” from the joy of sharing and having fun with all the wonderful workshop participants at Clay Art Vegas. Funky, fun, fantasy face jugs took the stage, and it was an honor to share the history behind this tradition.

Clay Arts Vegas Fan Page

10/07/2026

It was an honor to share my work and experiences with the Clay Art Vegas community. Connecting with fellow clay artists, exchanging ideas, and sharing the joy of creating made this such a rewarding experience. A heartfelt thank you to Thom and Peter for the opportunity and for making me feel so welcome. I’m inspired. And also grateful to have met this wonderful community and made new clay friends in Vegas. 😁

09/29/2026

Meet Zenny the Face Jug. Below are links to purchase and a short story about Zenny.

https://ebay.io/m/10cQe5

https://etsy.me/3VebhlK

Zenny’s dotted surfaces and winding patterns suggest a mind absorbed in making. Each repeated mark invites the focused attention associated with Zentangle practice and the ease of a flow state, where the maker’s sense of time recedes into the movement of the hand. The patterns continue from Zenny’s brightly divided face around his back, asking the viewer to turn the jug and discover what a single glance cannot reveal.

That invitation echoes the emphasis in Chan and Zen philosophy on direct experience. Through a perceptionist lens, Zenny becomes more than an object to look at: meaning emerges in the relationship among maker, clay, and viewer. His many colors and forms also carry a quiet suggestion of the possibility of an underlying unity within all that appears distinct.

09/24/2026

Here is my new face jug titled Dr. Quinton Relan Graves: The Reader of the Quantum Loom. Quinton suggests quantum, Relan combines relativity, relationship, and entanglement and Graves evokes gravity. Below are links to purchase and a short commentary.

https://ebay.io/m/3woKUW

https://www.etsy.com/listing/4581400313

A Clay Analogy
Imagine an unfired clay vessel. Its surface, interior volume, thickness, and structural tensions appear to be different properties, but all emerge from one continuous organization of clay. Likewise, Quantum information is the clay. Entanglement is how the clay is joined. Spacetime is the form that emerges. Matter is a persistent pattern in the form. Gravity is the form adjusting when that pattern redistributes the underlying structure. Trying to quantize gravity without questioning spacetime might be like trying to understand a vessel’s strength while treating its surface as something separate from the clay.

In that analogy, relativity describes the shape of relationships, quantum mechanics describes their possibilities, and gravity is the way that relational structure responds to information and energy.

09/05/2026

09/03/2026

“Those Moments in Between” reflects Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows, where beauty is found not in full illumination but in dimness, ambiguity, and quiet transition. These in-between moments, the pause between light and darkness, presence and absence, clarity and mystery, invite us to slow down and notice what is often overlooked. Meaning does not always emerge from what is fully revealed. Sometimes meaning resides in the shadows, where perception becomes more intimate, reflective, and open to possibility.

08/29/2026

I titled this face jug Tilaka Chakra. This face jug was inspired by a recent visit with my wife and her colleagues to one of the largest Hindu temples in North America. I have visited several times and during my visits, I have developed a deep appreciation for the temple’s ornate architecture, intricate craftsmanship, and sacred visual symbolism. This face jug respectfully acknowledges the rich artistic traditions and spiritual meanings found within Hindu culture.

08/11/2026

I am looking forward to sharing with the clay art community in October. This should be a fun and exciting time. I’m excited to meet everyone.

08/08/2026

I title this face jug “Stormy Monday,” after the T-Bone Walker song later made famous by the Allman Brothers, whose version I was listening to while working on the piece. The jug became a story in which seemingly unrelated experiences meet: North Carolina BBQ, the African roots of the banjo, and even a bright red fire hydrant that recalls my years as a volunteer firefighter. These ordinary images become markers of time, place, memory, and my own lived experience. Within that story, Stormy Monday reminds us that experience moves in rhythms, rising and falling like a wave, gathering like a cloud, and eventually breaking open beneath the sun. The face jug gathers these perceptions into a single object: earth shaped by human hands and carrying Southern memory, music, technology, weather, humor, and mystery. Through Perceptionism, these things do not exist in isolation; meaning emerges from the relationships we discover among them. In the end, the face staring back from the clay becomes a mirror, asking not simply, “What do you see?” but “How are you seeing?”

08/05/2026

This face jug is titled The Curator. Inspired in part by Carl Jung’s understanding of symbols and the evolving self, The Curator embodies the Perceptionist idea that identity is not discovered but continually assembled through experience. Like a museum of consciousness, this face jug gathers music, technology, imagination, philosophy, and language into a single evolving portrait. The watchful eyes remind us that perception is an active practice, while the YouTube icon represents the endless stream of modern experience that shapes our attention. Miles Davis’s trumpet speaks to improvisation and the wisdom found in silence, Snoopy celebrates imagination as a pathway to reality, Sattva points toward harmony and clarity, and the ancient Greek τάλαντον reminds us that true talent originally meant balance before it meant ability. Spirals weave these ideas together, symbolizing learning as a continual return to deeper understanding. In Perceptionism, we are all curators of our own consciousness, carefully selecting the experiences, relationships, and symbols that shape how we perceive ourselves, one another, and the world.