Mauna Kea Summit Big Island Ceramic Art Tile

Thirteen thousand eight hundred feet above the Pacific, the air goes thin, dry, and very still. Astronomers came here because the atmosphere stops getting in the way of the sky. The summit road climbs from the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa; the last switchbacks turn to gravel, and the visitor station at nine thousand sits in cloud most afternoons. By night the telescope domes open. In winter the cinder cones wear snow. Long before the first observatory, the mountain was sacred — Mauna a Wākea, the place where sky touches the island.

Slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, in our family studio in Knoxville, Tennessee.