Melissa Morgan Fine Art is pleased to celebrate William Catling’s solo exhibition, Under the Arbor of Time, now on view at Azusa Pacific University. The exhibition offers an opportunity to experience Catling’s distinctive sculptural practice and his ongoing exploration of the human condition, material, memory, and the passage of time.

Under the Arbor of Time remains on view through October 2, 2026.

Under the Arbor of Time is an exploration of memory, mortality, ritual, and the quiet labor of becoming.

Through stoneware figures and assemblages of found materials, the works inhabit a space between the tangible and the unseen, where memory becomes weight, silence becomes ritual, and waiting becomes a form of endurance. The figures appear caught in moments of contemplation, longing, and suspension. Their gestures suggest an ongoing excavation of the self: digging through accumulated layers of experience, carrying what cannot be released, and lingering at the threshold of what has yet to emerge.

Across the works, materials carry their own histories. Clay, iron, copper, pewter, wood, bark, and found objects evoke endurance, fragility, and transformation. The figures become vessels for the tensions inherent in being human—the ache of mortality, the persistence of memory, and the fragile hope that exists between what has been and what is yet to be.

The Weight of Memory (Vessels of Sorrow)

2017-2026
Stoneware with glaze, cold-finish-stained copper, bark covered wire, wooden base and smoke fired earthenware

Laboring Under the Arbor of Time (Digging Through the Layers of Becoming)
2017-2026
Stoneware, with glaze and cold-finish-rusted iron, constructed found objects and wooden bases

Angel of the Silence (Echoes of Ritual)
2017-2026
Stoneware, with cold-finish-stained bronze, painted-stained found objects and wooden bases

A Lingering on the Edge of What Is Yet To Be (A Posture of Waiting)
2025-2026
Stoneware, with cold-finish-rusted iron, found objects and wooden base

Fragile Longing (The Ache of Mortality)

2026
Stoneware, with cold-finish-stained pewter, stained earthenware, branches, bark covered wire, and wooden base