With the turn of the equinox, which literally translates to “equal night,” meaning equal length of night and day hours, there is a sense of balance, and with it an inherent potential for a tilt. New potters are keen to pick up on the asymmetry of their beginning efforts, noting the wonk in their wares’ rims,…
Category: handmade
Music In Pottery
Today, as I was hand-building a ceramic piece for a work in progress, the studio was unusually quiet: no frenzy of students, no classes rolling in. Only the timpani of rain on the window, and the repetitive tapping of my hake brush’s flat handle on the damp clay kept me company. The latter caught my…
Shifts and Breakthroughs
The temperature is incrementally rising and dropping. Spring is figuring itself out. I observe this seasonal shift in my own practice as a potter, too; a change in seasons is typically a time of stripping processes down and meeting forms where they are, and meeting limits and breakthroughs where they are. In this spirit,…
Throw Thyself
Whether or not we make work in the image of ourselves has no place in our thinking, but rather if we recognize ourselves in our work. There is no line between. There is no maker and piece, no line between potter and pot. To see a distinction between the two is an investment in delusion….
Let’s Play!
My students and I went to The Met Museum on a “field trip,” wandering their galleries in search of exquisitely baked vessels and sherds. Profoundly so, different pieces exercised different gravitational forces on each of us: some were drawn to the humblest of teapots from centuries ago, while others were grabbed by torqued abstractions made…