Long hours spent alone in the studio can often result in complex internal monologues or lead to interesting observations. Sometimes it results in burning questions shoving me down a rabbit hole of experimentations. And other times it is a profound feeling of gratitude for getting to play all day in clay and call it work.
Musings, in essence, are just a snapshot of reflections from the studio. An attempt to keep a personal record of the wild and the mundane and everything in between that I might experience during the course of my day in the studio while my hands are covered in clay.
I feel very grateful to have been blessed with some really amazing clay friends and Gaye Lynn and Michael Hodgson are very high up on my favorites list. They are the first people I turn to when I have a clay question. They might not have all the answers, but they take it upon themselves to help me work my way through the problem. They are my sounding board and my absolute favorite people to geek out with. Yesterday we
Very early in my clay journey, seeing my obsession with carving, my mentor predicted that one day, my working with porcelain seemed inevitable. Fast forward twenty some years, my clay has only gotten darker and groggier and my work extremely rustic and earthy with no scope for anything as pristine or perfect as porcelain. Last month, at a friend’s recommendation, I started to hear Edmund De Waal’s book, The White Road, an intimate narrative history of porcelain where the author
At dinner my husband asked me about my day in the studio and what I had been up to. My answer was, “Nothing much really.” As I sit down to write and reflect, that casually spoken comment comes back to mind. After all, I had spent a full day working without a break, so why that feeling of unaccomplishment? To understand that feeling better, I decided to write down all I did today: Made 20 test cups Made 20 test
After holding out for so long, I finally gave in and did my first charcoal, saggar firing in my electric kiln. Let me give a bit of a background. When I was in Bali last September, teaching a two week workshop, Seline my host ( who immediately became a dear friend) showed us some pieces that she had fired on a bed of charcoals set in a saggar, in an electric kiln. They were gorgeous but I had reservations about
Yesterday when I wrote about growing pains, I was metaphorically speaking, however today the pain is very real. After five hours of hand crushing, sieving and sorting wild soils and rocks in 95 F heat, with cuts and calluses on my hands, a sore back and arms from hunching and pounding, the sum total of my recordable work is captured in the following picture: I have had a growing pile of untested wild soils and rocks accumulating in my studio,
Following up on where I left off yesterday, I spent the entire day hollowing, joining and sealing the stack of rocks. This idea which had seemed quite exciting while it was incubating in my head, turned out rather underwhelming at the end. I have realized that it isn’t until I follow through on a design, do I really know if it was worth pursuing or not. I think I have come to an end of this line of thinking for
An upside about making time to play and experiment is that one isn’t working on a deadline, so if, at the end of a full work day, the takeaway is that what I tried didn’t work, that is a great lesson in itself. Today after finishing some kurinuki pieces, I worked on the idea that first popped in my head while I was typing last evening’s entry. So following that vision, I made a bunch of solid rocks, stacked and
If I had to name one thing I am most influenced by, it would definitely be rocks. i have made rock bowls, rock lidded jars, rock salt and pepper shakers and in this residency, as part of form exploration, I want to see what else I can build with this aesthetic. So today I textured a piece of clay to emulate a rocky outcropping which would hopefully become a table lamp. As I am writing this, I am also thinking
After a very fulfilling experience at the St Croix pottery tour, I am back in my studio and began my three week residency today. Before I elaborate, I would like to share these words by the celebrated clay artist Dick Lehman written at the completion of fifty years of working in clay. “Being disciplined to set asidetime (that you’ve already paidfor) is essential for development,experiment, and growth. Onlyyou can do this. You don’t workfor some other employer whomakes the difficult fiscaldecisions