Clay Club Olympics

Once a month Clay Club meets at a designated potter’s studio in Western North Carolina. If my schedule, obsession with my own work, and introverted moodiness allow, I go and always enjoy meeting and hanging out with my claymates. This January was the second annual Clay Olympics, with categories such as Biggest Thrown Vessel, Blindfolded Throwing, and Ugliest Face Jug. It was definitely the most fun I’ve had I ages. Free spirited, creative and dirty… these are my people.

 

Tallest Thrown Vessel

 

Blindfolded Throwing

 

Team Throwing

I entered Ugliest Face Jug, where we had 8 minutes to decorate a pre-thrown jug. Here is my entry:

It was a tough competition with 20+ entries. I won 3rd place. The highlight was the experience of working side by side creatively with other potters. I want to do that more. Maybe I’ll take a class at Odyssey this year. I don’t have the temperament to work well with others but when it comes to play…. that’s easy.

Thank you, John Britt and Emily Reason, for creating and managing the NC ClayClub.

by believing passionately

What drives me in pottery, after all these years, is not to give birth to stuff that merely decorates. I believe that if you are decorating, you are already dead. The places where we dwell, the room we awake into, the table we set are not reflections of who we are. These are the molds that shape who we are. They create us, and we are reflections of what surrounds us.

When I create pottery for the table, it is with the intention to nourish the soul, to open interesting discussions, to leave imprints of wild and organic shapes in the memories of those who gather.

In learning to style my photos I am reading techniques so that I might bring the possibility of beautiful, wild, organic living. The regimented geometry of where things must be placed is stifling. I love creating flow and movement and pushing the boundaries. Technically, I am still pretty basic. This will improve over time.

Pottery displayed available here
Do you believe passionately in something that still does not exist?

Cake Stand –works in progress

Here is my first prototype for a woodland cake stand. This project began when a fellow foodie asked if I would make  this woodland planter as a base for a cake stand:

Cake stands are notoriously difficult and temperamental pieces but I just have to try it.

CAUTION: This is not a DIY post. This is a copyright protected original design in progress. Do NOT try this yourself. If you do, or pin it to a DIY board on Pinterest, your left eyeball will ooze green puss and black hairs will emerge from both nostrils. Don’t say you were not warned.

Here are my small prototypes:

The bases were hand built hollow sculptures and the tops were thrown on a wheel.

A coil of clay was added to the base and thrown on the wheel so that the top is perfectly level. Tree branch stumps were added.

The top was joined to the bottom, with slip between. Coils reinforce the joint.

Of these three small scale works, I like the flat top without the skirt the best. I chose this one for my large prototype, but also made 2 more in case this design cracks or warps in the firing. I may have to repeat this design process 2-10 more times if I want a cake stand that I can reliably produce as a small scale production piece. Additionally, the glaze I intend to use may need to be reformulated to work in these varied surfaces.

I have weeks and sometimes years of design hours in most of my work, and that is before I begin messing around with the styling, description, and market testing.

Why would an artisan such as myself, in the middle of Wedding Season with orders on hold, bother to create something new? Why would I not just do what I already know, make what will effortlessly sell?

Sarah-Lambert Cook gave her reasons in this post, which started me thinking about why the idea of a woodland cake stand displaced my love of abundant cash, and trust me, I do love that, too. There is something about having what I see in my mind’s eye emerge into a tangible thing that gives me great joy. So I guess, essentially, I do it for the fun.

Why Copycats Fail

I am often awed by how much common ground I have with my brother-in-law who is a research geneticist. We both work in silence and seclusion. We both toll the inner landscape in uncharted territory, intending to bring forth something unknown or unseen yet. We share a near obsessive curiosity about the natural world and what makes a living creature live.

I do not make my stoneware clay owls by technique alone. I am looking at each one in my hand for that precise way that a poke or press creates a living expression.  Some are stern, some sweet, some perhaps a little stoned.

 

My owls appear in OneClayBead as an owl soap dish:

and here as a handmade owl casserole:

If you reach inside yourself, you may discover a place where owls take shape. On the other hand, if you look at my work to see how I did it, and reproduce it by technique alone, your copy will be lifeless. And this is why copycats fail. It is why true artists have work similar in structure and form that has a life all to itself.

This is a discussion started on Artisans Gallery Team and continued on the blog of Nicolas Hall.

If you have thoughts or experiences with copycats, you are welcome to comment.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In the studio yesterday, Marci told me that she was turning her cell phone off more often. She was weary of the drama. She was happy glazing; excited about a new design. This, above all, I have wanted to impart to my teen daughter.

After some early success in the fine art world in my 20’s , I began making pottery. Fine art is so gravely serious. Works of light and joy were, at the time, viewed as useless fluff, and perhaps they still are. I was drawn to the silent thoughtless world of clay where you can be moved to an almost holy place just by how beautiful something is.

Today I ran across this quote. It is from the novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

“she knew that she had become a burden to him: she took things too seriously, turning everything into a tragedy, and failed to grasp the lightness and amusing insignificance of physical love. how she wished she could learn lightness!”

I suddenly wanted to see lightness everywhere, to go outside and capture with my camera the light shining through leaves. To feel that lightness of being is to be transparent, thin of  negativity and judgment, and allow the light of Creation to shine through.

I’m going to do this more often. it feels good.

Imagine. Dare. Dream. Make it.

“When the soul wishes to experience something, she throws an image of the experience out before her and enters into her own image.’ –Meister Eckhart
When I stare at the chalky grayness of clay,  I use my mind’s eye to give it color. Unlike paint, glaze contains little resemblance to the final fired color, so I have trained myself through the years, to mentally try on my various glazes until I visualize the ones I want. I also choose, first in my imagination, the little embellishments like the wire twig on my Owl House ornament.
This ability to dream, to see in my mind’s eye, to explore what might be, to give birth to possibility, is a skill that serves me well in my art and in my life.
Owl House began with this feeling that this holiday season will be full of joy, magic, and everyday blessings. I shut my eyes and immersed myself in that feeling, and the image of the little owl perched in it’s snug home, staring with curiosity, emerged.

Building a Body of Work

We fall in love first with the pure act of creation. From there we chose a medium, such as clay, paint, metalwork. The pieces we make for sale are a consequence of an inner exploration, and that’s the most fulfilling context for creation. If you follow this path, what you create is a legacy that is distinctively your own, as Jonathan Fields so aptly describes. What you get if you don’t follow this path is a frustrating, jealousy producing, creative dead end of finding objects that others have made and trying to make them. In this world there is a great deal of finger pointing and reading endless marketing tips, and seeing other creatives as competition. The most threatening people of all in this world are the ones who are successful. Frankly, it’s not a satisfying place to be, and if you are a creative person stuck in this world, get out now! Put your time and energy into building a body of work!

A body of work is a clear, recognizable  path that you are taking with your artistic exploration and creations. To build a body of work,  just pick one thing that you like to make that you can make well. Make that with one invariable quality, and several variable qualities. Your same quality might be same subject matter, size, color, or utilitarian function. For example, I made these casseroles last year:

 

 

Here are some variations:

I also took the casserole shape in this direction and developed Keepsake Boxes, which is a smaller version of my casserole form, without handles.

A body of work is a path that you forge. You end up in uncharted territory, making things that aren’t like other people’s work. You begin to respect and even like other creative people, and recognize those who have also forged their own path. The challenge now is to continue to progress, to continuously move forward.

Werner Erhard once said, “Any idiot can walk a path when shown one. But out here, there is no path. The path is made by your walking.”

That’s what I’m talking about!

Garden Retreat

 

This is my back yard. It was a shambles when we bought the house, but we’ve built the flagstone patio area with the swing, fire pit and picnic table, planted tender new flowerbeds everywhere and spent many long evenings eating and laughing together here.

My daughter and I just finished this dinnerware set, which combines my Organic Soul with her garden Retreat.

 

We’ve worked hard on the dinnerware set to make the leaf plates curl gracefully, to make plates that are organic shapes but also not warped. We’ve sweated in physical labor as a family creating our retreat far more than the time we’ve spent lazily enjoying it.

Is this a conundrum, to work hard making a place of rest, or a dinnerware set intended for long leisurely meals?

The work has been a kind of joy and pleasure unlike any other. There are thoughts that come while forming clay into a poppy or planting new lilies or laying the flagstone that are as if the mind has opened and something large and full of grace steps in. Inside of the physical work of creativity I find delight, as if delight were the most serious thing possible.

River Journey Series

My two favorite things in clay are textures, especially lace textures, and glazes that flow. The River Journey series has the colors from my whitewater rafting trips on the French Broad River, and this one captured that essence perfectly.

I may not go rafting for another month as I am still fragile, recovering from surgery. These colors still call to me, perhaps even more urgently as memories than as experiences in real time.  I think of that exhilarating moment going over rapids, scenery blurring, control suspended, and what it is to be no more than a leaf taken by a strong current. Isn’t it ironic that most of our lives are spent trying to get or maintain control, while the nanoseconds of exquisite joy occur during abandon and surrender. Perhaps this is why I layer 7-10 glazes and stack them in the kiln, never knowing what the heck will happen.

Like this one.

MarciG’s flowers

 

                                              

Marci G

at work

I love Marci’s new flower bowls. They have evolved from a bowl that looks somewhat like a flower to flowers that contain the idea of a bowl.

I started in clay as sculpture and transitioned to functional work. Marci’s path is the reverse.

the dove series

I think it's the coo-ing that thy do, that simple song of a majestic dove, the magical gentleness that calls my curiosity. I've watched them for literally hours, how they share the household duties of nest building and egg sitting, and take turns foraging while the other stays home.

One speaks and the other listens. They mate for life.

Sometimes it seems that my imagination takes wings with them as they soar to that nest in the pines. They own twigs and grass and each other and not a single other thing. I  imagine this in my clay pieces, where doves are gathering, more every day! My clay doves are informed by my winged beauties, and by Leonard Cohen's music where pathos is a prayer and comfort runs deep.

OneClayBead

I have been dreaming of making my OneClayBead jewelry for half a year, and now I've carved out the time to do it. I have 5 successful pieces finished after 4 days of messing around with my loot from a wholesale bead show, all using at least one of my own hand formed stoneware clay beads. I could have made $750 in pottery inventory in this amount of time, and have an entire page of customer requests that I am neglecting, but this is something that I need to do. No financial adviser would tell you to stop making successful products and instead fumble around with expensive materials and no production plan. There is, however, a difference between an industrial factory and an artistic soul.

I want to make jewelry that is unlike anyone else's. I like the boho style. I like using natural materials and other people's handmade beads, and I like teaching myself new techniques and using all my various craft skills together.

This ^ is one of my most unique designs, just finished yesterday, and listed here. I macramed 32" of silk and cotton cord with pearls and mother of pearl carved beads. I used one of my own Spiral Heart stoneware beads, and a Tibetan silver and pearl dangle. The model is my daughter's friend, Julia, and I like the shot of her, too. I like using unprofessional models, no make up, and capturing that inner quality.

I'm very pleased with the few pieces I've created. Something intangible and vital gets woven into the strands and strung on cord, and connected to clasps. It relates to, and also informs my claywork.

I wonder if other artists and craftspeople pursue different media. I recommend it highly! If you are not failing over half the time, I assert that you are not truly creating.

A Potter does Thanksgiving

I was looking forward to baking with my daughter on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, as a break from making a gazillion ornaments in clay. When we made our sweet potato buscuits, cut out in Star of Davids, I realized that this is basically the same thing as working in the studio, except it smells better baking. And when it came time to put a lattice crust on the apple pie, I couldn't control myself. The potter in me took over, and soon I was cutting out leaf shapes, and hand forming acorns. Then adding a milk and organic sugar coating to make it brown nicely.

Yes, I have always been this way, and so has Marci. I knew that she had the artist's gift when she requested broccoli at age 5. She didn't eat it. Instead, she made a hump of potatoes and stuck the broccoli heads in like little trees.

I guess you just can't take a break from being who you are.

Buy Me

Sherrie and Allison, the buyer and manager of Grovewood Gallery, were here yesterday to pick out pots for the gallery. They both had many kind words for my new work, and picked my Buy Me table clean.

Even after 30 years, I have an inexplicable level of anxiety around who likes my work, how much they like it, and whether people who liked last year's work will take the leap with me into my new stuff. I keep working on ideas and lines whether or not they sell, but it is so much easier when they do! The urge to create comes from within me, and I enter states where the sheer sweetness of color and form, the audacious purity of impressionable clay, and the timeless trance of hands/eyes/attention are reason enough to keep making new pieces. But I, like any artist, secretly want a place in the world, and the place in the world that we all want is one where what we do that moves us to joy or tears moves others as well.

Unfolding

Whitney Smith opened a Pandora's box with her blog post, The Double Edged Sword of Etsy, in which she wrote about how she took action regarding another Etsy hobbyist potter who is copy catting her work. With 35 comments now posted, and a spillover discussion onto the Etsymudteam thread spanning 30 pages, about the only noncontroversial thing to be said is that this is a hot topic with indignation, passion, defensive stances, and lines in the sand. (I made my soapbox stand here, bottom of page, as OneClayBead, if you are interested).

The subtext that causes so much controversy is in how we use the word 'inspiration.' If I say 'I am inspired by Martin Luther King', it means that I want to become as much like him as possible, and we generally think of this as a good thing. I want the things that I do to look like the things that he did, and that, too, is a viewed as a good thing. There is a messy carry-over from this to saying that I am inspired by Whitney Smith, or a particular piece that Whitney made, and so I want to make pieces of pottery just like hers, or so rawly derivative of hers that they are knock-offs.

To think like this is to interfere with a process of unfolding that takes place within every artist if you let it. There is a source inside you that drives you to create, to make something, to rearrange pencils on a table even, until they are just right, and the whole thrill and payoff from being an artist is to let that unfolding happen. Pottery is only fun when I'm lost in becoming myself.

This iris ^ may look somewhat like the one next to it when it reveals itself down to the anther hidden within, but the beauty and splendor of nature are in infinite variables, of an evolution from one generation or season to the next.

There was a time period of 2 years when I cancelled subscriptions to pottery mags, and refused to let my eyes linger on other artist's work. It is when my unfolding began.

Up All Night

I was up all night, and watched the shadows become velvet blankets as the world outside closed around itself. There were no stars visible, only the gentle rain making its long journey from the clouds. In the blue blackness, sound paints creatures with each rustle, and gives to my imagination the ability to create what is unthinkable by day. And I think of my early adulthood with conversations about all matters of absolute importance which the night, and visiting friends, and wine brought forth. And of pre-Mom times when I knew by 10 pm that the night energy was going to carry me like a woman on the River Styx through another all nighter in my studio.

This is my glaze pattern called Night Chi, night energy. It's my expression of the wisdom and treasures of that which is hidden from sight, and known to me by following dreams and mysteries. By following creative impulses into the unknown and uncharted landscape. And being willing to ditch my plans and schedule like a boring date, and sneak out with Night Chi.

Strategies for Success as an Artist

I thought I'd blog some of my tips for surviving and thriving as a studio artist for 30 years. As an artist running a sole proprietor business, most of the advice I got from well meaning people that did not work for me was about how to run an efficient, profit-driven manufacturing plant. As I've said in Creativity, this led me into deadening boredom. Here are some pointers that I found invaluable:

1) "Your inner artist is a child", according to Julia Cameron. That means that an artist's job is to play. That doesn't mean to just make messes (although sometimes it does) and it does mean to abandon oneself to imagination, surrender to creative impulses. Dream. Go with 'what if?' just for the pleasure of it.

2) "No matter how beautifully a puppet is dancing on the end of its strings," said Werner Erhart, "I have a sense that there is no joy in it for the puppet." If you hit a winning formula, like the piece that wins a competition, or will sell over and over, there is a strong pull to lock yourself in to making just that or things derived from that until Sales is like a puppeteer and you are dancing on its strings. Don't do it.

3) "Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business." (Tom Robbins) Believe in magic. Period.

Now here are my own daffodils and polliwogs of wisdom:

4) Learn to be very comfortable in your own skin, and your own mind. Some form of exercise and some spiritual discipline are essential, or art will never be more than another attempt to escape yourself.

5) Make a solemn agreement that you will only tell the truth in your art. This was huge for me. I actually made an inventory of all the ways I lied in my pottery: by making shapes that I knew were off center or poorly finished, telling myself that with a pretty glaze they would sell anyway. Using bright colors when my soul at the time cried out for subtle and mellow colors, or vice versa. Making work that was fast and marketable cheap, and saying I would explore a little artistic growth when I had a fat IRA (someday...)

6) At least once a year, redesign your life. Design is the context, the box, the often overlooked structure of an organization or our individual life. If your dream is huge, the structure of your current life may be too small to hold it. Design your day, your home, your studio, your family to support and facilitate where you intend to go as an artist.

7) Tell everyone off on a regular basis, eat only desserts, and run up your credit cards to the max. Just kidding! But I was serious about everything else!