One Big Plate, Five Small Plaques: The Rehovot Story

Not every plaque starts life as a plaque. The one that ended up in Rehovot, Israel, started as something much bigger: a single large ceramic plate, cast and glazed with the intention of being one striking, oversized 5=3 piece.

It didn't survive being one piece. Firing a large flat slab of clay is unforgiving — the bigger the piece, the more places it can crack, warp, or simply give up in the kiln. Mine cracked into several sections, and for a moment it looked like a ruined batch of work.

But a broken plate is still ceramic, and ceramic can still be cut, sanded, and finished into something smaller and sturdier. Instead of discarding the pieces, I turned them into five separate small plaques — each one its own complete “5=3,” each one able to travel and be placed on its own, rather than staying locked together as one large piece that could only ever exist in one place.

This is a story about how one big plate didn't turn out well, but it ended up becoming five small plaques instead.

I ended up liking the result more than the plan I started with. One big plate can only go to one city. Five small plaques went further, more quietly, in more directions — which, if I'm honest, is closer to what this project is actually about than a single grand gesture ever was.

Rehovot wasn't the only time the material itself ended up shaping the outcome more than my original plan did. Switching from hand-cut ceramic to cast porcelain in Madrid came from a similar instinct — noticing what a material could do that my original approach couldn't, and following that instead of forcing the first idea through. A street poster built entirely out of pregnancy tests came from the same place too: not a plan I sat down and designed, but a material that suggested its own shape once I let it.

It's a small, practical lesson that keeps repeating itself: the plan rarely survives contact with the kiln, the weather, or the wall — and usually, what comes out the other side of that is better anyway.