We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Attired in a pair of baggy khaki shorts, a burnt orange t-shirt and cross trainers, 32-year-old clay artist Charlie Cummings recently sat calm, cool and collected, ensconced before a computer in the minimally air-conditioned office of his Clay Studio and Gallery complex on South Clinton Street.

At mid-afternoon the outside temperature was stuck in the 90s with a corresponding level of humidity, giving everything the sticky quality of a soggy Post-ItÆ note.

Reminded that he should be at home with such oven-heated conditions - he is after all a potter/sculptor who spends considerable time around very hot kilns and ovens - Cummings related an incident from 1999 in Berea, Kentucky when he conducted an outdoor workshop.

“The temperature was 116. I think it’s still the record there,” he recalled, “and I was wearing a heavy, heat-resistant apron with gloves working before this wood fueled oven.”

Cummings doesn’t do the “If you want to talk about ‘hot’ thing.” This articulate, self-effacing artist instead despairs of the amount of time he’s forced to spend in the office keeping his website (www.claylink.com) current, printing mailing labels, fielding phone calls and dealing with an interviewer, tasks that keep him away from his nearby studio and his passion for creating.

He wasn’t really kvetching as much as making a statement about the price he’s paying for the success and recognition he’s experienced in the past four years at his studio, where he offers classes, access, apprenticeships and residencies, and the notoriety of his gallery exhibitions, in addition to the acclaim he’s garnered from the sales of his own work.

Taken together these distinctly different activities propel Cummings in disparate directions. His gallery has become a regional, if not national, hub for the display of the works of many of the country’s best-known ceramicists. The current show featuring Erin Furimsky and Tyler Lotz closes at the end of the month and will be followed by a solo show, the 32nd at the gallery, by Petra Kralickova, “Intimation of Remembrance,” which is scheduled to open July 9. Following that solo show will be the 21-member group invited to participate in the “Teapot Invitational” for a three-week run beginning September 10.

The volume of business with a West Coast postcard printer has earned him a “preferred” status and discounts. His familiarity and personal relationships with many of the artists in his stable helped him garner an invitation to curate a show at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, “Contemporary Functional Ceramics: Transcending Utilitarian Concerns,” which will open August 20 and continue through the end of October in the museum’s main gallery.

The museum exhibition includes a panel discussion, with Cummings as a moderator, on the subject of “craft versus art.” Such appearances are not unusual for the artist who makes several each year, the most recent in Baltimore, where he delivered a workshop on entrepreneurialism.

“Fortunately or unfortunately, the field of ceramics - functional, sculptural or whatever - is typically driven by academics,” he explained. “College graduates, if they stick with what they know, end up in the most accessible market for their skills, and that traditionally is in an academic setting. They gravitate to places where they have access to facilities, ovens, spaces, etc., and that’s where they stay.”

What Cummings has been able to develop - the combination of teaching classes, offering exhibits in his gallery and the ability to pursue his own artistic interests simultaneously - is largely a rarity in his world of clay.

Cummings’ sculptural pieces, as opposed to his functional pottery, are distinct in style as well as in technique. The formula is not simple.

“Making multiples of a form allows me to explore variations of a theme and build relationships between individual pieces,” writes Cummings. “I modify photographic images, which I then use to make plastic stencils. I use the stencils to apply slip images to the forms. The surface is then dry-brushed to bring out the textures and lines created when the first layer of slip is applied. The images become subtle textures on the surface of the form.

“I choose images that have many levels of meaning, both historically and personally. Images that represent isolation, connectedness, transformation, ephemerality [sic], predestination, choice and opposition are used to convey the things that drive individuals and the way they interact with others.”

The artist’s choice of icons and symbols are familiar: butterflies, skull and crossbones, playing card suits, chess pieces and dominoes.

“I ask my viewers to bring something to the table,” he explained. “I need to them buy into the images and then work to make connections with sometimes some disparate images. Butterflies conjure ideas of freedom, lightness, etc. My series of elongated, stretched forms represent for me the human form.”

The domino series can be particularly revealing of the artist’s interests and reoccurs in several themed works and in his installations. Wherever the origins of dominoes began, it is generally agreed upon that they were extracted from dice. Used as a game of chance and skill or in divination rituals, they remain universal icons. No zeros are represented in Eastern sets, but they are included in the Western version, which is based on a cycle of 28. An amusing anecdote tells the story that the game was popular with Catholic monks (translated from the Latin, domino can mean either “Oh Lord” or “I am the Lord.”) who kept vows of silence. When, however, one was declared a winner, he would be allowed to exclaim “Domino!”

Cummings plays with his dominoes in unique ways but always within the rules of his own making. He substitutes the plain markings or dots with subtle and repetitive images like the skull and crossbones, butterflies and his patented elongated bowling pins. When arranged as in a game or other constructions, these over-sized pieces (the large ones can weigh up to 50 pounds) join in patterns that are both challenging and pleasing.

“This body of work is an expression of my curiosity about the inner life of others,” Cummings elaborated. “On the surface and at our core we are all the same, but somewhere in between we find potential for infinite variations. This work captures the vague sense of familiarity and foreignness inherent in our interactions.”

Will success spoil Cummings? He doesn’t appear to be running out of ideas or energy even in sweltering conditions.

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