Zen and the art of pottery making

For the first few months of learning to throw on a potter’s wheel, you struggle to center the clay. After that, the clay begins to center you.

This is one of the smartest things I’ve learned in my life: no matter what life throws at you, fair or unfair, deserved or underserved, welcome or unwelcome, your happiness is not determined by it. Getting the good stuff doesn’t make you happy, and it isn’t necessary to get all the bad stuff to go away in order to be happy.

In fact happiness is a kind of emptiness, no doubts, worries, longings. It comes like an exhilarating wave whenever you are at peace with the present moment, not wanting to change anything, just 100% grateful and appreciative of the gifts and opportunities each moment holds. So yeah, there are brief spaces like that when you are at the perfect place with the perfect people and you can just bask in the glow. But for the most part life has annoying waiters at he perfect restaurant, bugs on the idyllic hike, etc. Your parents failed to give you perfect unconditional love and the Prince has halitosis and an allergy to your cats.

It is much more reliable to enter that silent inner core of our being, which can be found with meditation, which can be found with deep prayer, which can be found with mastery of an art or sport that demands your complete surrender of attention to the present moment. Through the myriad ups and downs of my life, my studio has been a sanctuary. I come here to still my mind, release my stress, sooth my soul, let go my anger.

This is my new serving set, the White Lotus nesting tray set. When aligned symmetrically, the petals form arrows pointing inward and circles radiating outward. It was made after I centered the clay… and after the clay centered me.

Have you found the lotus, that pure flower of peace, love, and joy that rises through the muddy waters? Have you learned to wage peace?

Art from nature

Sometimes I see something – a storm approaching, a bloom opening, the colors or textures of sunlit water – and want to capture it in a pottery design. Moe often, I work intuitively until something feels right, and later see a flower, field or brook that I noticed has flowed freely and effortlessly into my ceramics.

 

Flower bowl at Lee Wolfe Pottery

 

Urban Rustic bowl from Lee Wolfe Pottery

Details

                                                                                       

I ran my hands along the wrought iron gates of Jackson Square, which have been worn away and repainted many times over. Café Du Monde still serves the beignets and French coffee that taste the way my memory serves them when I think about the 22 year old girl I was when I moved to New Orleans after college. I had not returned in 30 years until last weekend when my husband and I went for the Jazz and Heritage Festival, which, incidentally, is more fun than I can describe. If I think about the many layers of emotion that flooded through me, its overwhelming. There are the Katrina stories I heard, the vibrant funky music from the Gospel tent to the main stages, the incomparably good food, and all the quirky peculiarities of culture such as Mardi Gras Indians, Zydeco, and how alcoholism is not viewed as a disease but rather a sort of religion. It’s such a contradiction. New Orleans is fragile, damaged, corrupt, even violent, and at the same time its resilience is impossibly strong, and the lack of pretention is a form of purity. Despite the many who died or may yet die due to inept leadership, pollution or crime, those who live there are so fully alive. It is contagious. I think I’ll go back more often. I also see how my early experiences in New Orleans still live in me, and flow out into my ceramic work expressed in color, texture, funky shapes made with joy and sometimes after working through great frustration. The old lace. The fluid geometry. The details.

Sarah-Lambert Cook's Amazing Creative Vortex

The miniature watercolor with its impossibly rich detail and precision rendering are impressive, but what makes Sarah-Lambert Cook stand out is the quirky choice of subject matter. Monty Python, Jane Austen and Harper Lee references show up often, usually with an unusual personal twist. There are also finely drawn  animals, flowers, landscapes. Where, you might wonder, does she get all these ideas? Well, for starters, she has moved 5 times in the last year as a military spouse, so she's seen a lot of various landscapes, zoos, museums, nature preserves. But her best inspirational source is with her younger sisters. Their distinct and fearless personalities are captured below, along with Sarah-Lambert's notes. I think it shows how one creative person is often the voice for all that has touched us, especially the people who live in our hearts and minds.

This is my youngest sister who, at 16 years younger than myself, has a fantastic person style.  

She's really into red pandas right now and is wearing my Red Panda necklace (found here) while holding her own pet red panda, Charlie Brown.

Julianne is a pensive, beautiful girl who is just on the cusp of high school now. (Wearing the Le Magical Fireflies necklace) 

She spends a lot of time reading and even more time inventing stories of her own! (Wearing the Arrowhead necklace) 

Katy-Lynn is on the cusp of college and full of possibilities. Her observant nature helps in her writing which she is very good at! (Wearing the Llama locket)

Urban Rustic Dinnerware

Beach Storm dinnerware set

My dinnerware had to be changed. This directive did not come from the marketplace, clearly; I have orders booked 8 months out. I don’t know, after all these years, what drives my work forward in new directions.

Ice blue bowl with vines

I know that I worked through many transitions until these new pieces finally emerged. As soon as I had enough individual pieces that felt right, I began assembling them into sets. The last piece to emerge was the thrown and altered bowl from Minimalist:

Minimalist dinnerware set

Which is also in this set:

Soft Kiss dinnerware set

River Journey has the same elements of my older set except for the vines on the underside:

But I truly, after all these years, do not know where these ideas come from. If I want new ideas, what I do is to stare at something from the natural world, or perhaps photographs of it. One minute there are shadows from the fence posts in the late afternoon, and the next there are textured stripes in my clay.

Sarah- Lambert Cooke wrote this week about inspiration here.  Victoria, owner of Donauluft wrote about it here.

We seem to have one thing in common. Inspiration is born in moments of fascination. It is the best experience I have ever known.

Family

I rarely start out to make these insanely elaborate decorations. You would think that after 70+ hour weeks in the studio making pottery, I’d just make a pie, or stick flowers in a vase. But my mind is racing with imagery. At the market I just have to have these particular lime green mums, and…not those…not those…oh, have to have these bright red mini carnations! And then they have to be meticulously arranged. Like this:

And the funny thing is, I never feel closer to my grandmother than when I am obsessed with getting the pie crust to look just right. I can so vividly recall her lattice crust and the way she used a zigzag cutter to cut the strips.

This Thanksgiving, my daughter returned for the first time a grown woman. She went right to work in the studio, making pottery for her Etsy shop, MarciG. When she helped me cook and bake, I was amazed at how much she knew without being told. And then it occurred to me how many years she’d silently been there, just watching.

Flock of Love by MarciG

I think what makes us family is not so much our genetics, as we are all so very different. It is rather this silent language that runs through us.

We make our nests, our homes like a monk prays, or like a little bird sings.

Raised In Love from OneClayBead

First Snow

  

The first cold flakes fell silently in the early dawn, blanketing the leaves we’ve not yet raked into piles.
Each white glistening orb seems like an answer falling from heaven. My world is transformed from autumn’s landscape of loss into a confection made with spun sugar and pearls.
It is beautiful as we walk outside, but we scurry inside soon as do all our woodland friends. Time to share our stories and dream our dreams by the fire.
Here is my new glaze, Blue Ice Crystal. The first piece sold right away but I'll be using it more in weeks to come. Wishing you beauty, and the light of love that shines from the eyes of those who gather with you by candles and fireplaces, as we burrow inside.

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.

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.

as 2009 ends

It was a year unlike any other of my life, and one that has taught the lessons of adversity. I think we're getting good at the making lemonade when life hands you lemons thing. We had a power outage for the last night of Chanukah, and sat by candlelight all evening, playing board games, roasting mini- marshmallows in the tiny candle flames, and finally just talking. It was one of the best evenings we've spent.

Next we had a blizzard, and when the shoveling was done, we made a snowman. He is still there, a symbol of the crazy mad laughter that is available no matter what the circumstances. When you strip everything bare, you can see quite clearly how the simplest moments and the humblest things are an invitation to happiness and joyful abandon. The way a cardinal looks against the stark snow. The cat that curls up on a present under the tree. The teenage girls, who for no particular reason decide one day to begin a conversation as if you are someone worth asking.

I walked past the brook I love today, and it was silent with ice, as if holding its breath. There is no breeze. Only expectation, as we wait for the last night to invite our wishes and prayers.

Happy New Year! Dare to dream huge, and may all you envision be yours!

The Circle: Chranukah

A clever and talented perfume maker and blogger, Roxana of Illuminated Perfume, asked me to participate in a holiday round robin Advent-ure. For each day of the Christian Advent, a different blogger creates their own little post about scent and its relationship to the experience of the holiday season. If you enjoy my post, check out the links above to read all the posts in this series!

We are a blended tradition family who celebrate the Christmas of my Episcopalian childhood with the Chanukah of my husband's faith, in a season that we now refer to in our household as Chranukah. Time has smoothed the blend, and I can now sing the Hebrew blessings as artfully as my husband hangs outdoor lights of blue and white, but it wasn't always that way.

In our first holiday season together in one household, it became painfully obvious that the plethora of Christmas decoration swallowed up our menorah, the carols hogged the airwaves, and the cookies, candies, and cakes were like painted harlots vying for attention with a singular plate of latkes. My husband and his sons were woefully uncomfortable.

Our new kitten, aptly named Loca, created the comic relief that smoothed over our tension by perpetually stealing baby Jesus from our nativity scene and leaving Him to be found under pillows, in a shoe, or under a chair. One day Baby Jesus went missing, not to be found, and we had a whole Christmas with a manger scene that lacked Jesus.

The next spring, while tending to the new growth in our gardens, my husband burst into the house, holding the tiny sewn figure, and exclaimed "I found Jesus!" My daughter and I laughed ourselves silly! "Don't tell your mother!" "Don't tell my mother what?" "Don't tell your mother that you found Jesus! She'll think we've converted you!"

This story is told every year as we hang ornaments, and put our nativity scene under the tree. We now eat gingerbread Star of David cookies, and send batches to my in-laws who love them. I've become a great latke chef, and make homemade applesauce, so those smells now evoke our holiday memories: gingerbread, fresh and pungent applesauce, steaming plates of latkes. And Baby Jesus still maintains a slightly earthy scent. What we are all celebrating is not really so different, or so it seems to me. Hope. Miracles. The light that comes into the world and our hearts and cannot be extinguished.

grateful

When I rise from the ocean of sleep, my eyes open with gratitude. Last year at this time we were all so fearful, wistful, hoping for a change, a way out of economic collapse. I did not let that fear climb into the driver's seat of my life nor tell me what to imagine, nor write the story of my year. Everywhere I saw light upon frozen snow, painting a softness, and glowing from the eyes of moths at my window, and shimmering cool dappled shadows beneath the tall trees. I gave my heart to the light, everyday.

My pottery has been a refuge this past year, a doorway into a land where something deep and precious waits to be born. And I've opened my kiln, curious to see who is there.

And so this year, I am most grateful for creativity and active imagining and dreaming and all the attributes that they tell you, in 3rd grade somewhere, you must outgrow in order to memorize endless useless lists of facts.

As my heart and soul have dreamed, so my life has become. Hope has been a winged bird this year. And for this, and the other gifts of grace given to me this year, I am grateful.

lessons from a woodpecker

My daughter noticed this helpless feathered life lying on its side. A heart beat but a bone protruded from its delicate wing, and blood seeped from its beak. Still, I cradled it in my hands. Marci got a small box with a soft towel, and we laid the immobile bird, a downy woodpecker, to rest in the softness. It looked with acceptance into my eyes and we spoke to it in gentle tones, the language of comfort.

I asked Marci to take it to her room, away from the cats, and warm. The plan was to see if it could rest, and perhaps survive. I wasn't sure if the limp body could support life. About an hour later, Marci burst into my studio claiming that the bird was out of its box and sitting on her rug! We hurried with joy to her door, and the startled woodpecker, with improbable lightness, flew into the closet!

There were a few minutes of comical chase, as I, after catching his tuxedo-ed body in a towel, released him upon command. Just as he understood our soothing, I know when I've been told a thing or two! It occurred to me to open the window, remove the screen, and turn off the lights. It worked! With gentle nudging, Mr. Woodpecker took flight, and dissappeared from our world and into his own.

I think of the lessons from the world, and this is how soothing works. Healing is an unseen ball of light that we pass amongst us, willing all that is broken to mend, and finally, to take flight.

Abundance

I've learned an interesting lesson over the past year, which is that abundance has little to do with what you actually have, and a lot to do with your relationship with what you have. Abundance is less of a bank statement and more of a state of mind. Abundance is a feeling of having everything you need and just a little bit more, and generously giving from that context of gratitude that you've been blessed beyond your needs.

I was not born into a Norman Rockwell picture, and I did not learn these types of Precious Moments platitudes from my saint of a mother. I spent many years convinced that abundance was something I would acheive if my income went up $50,000 more, that generosity meant calculatingly giving to prestigious charities, and that gratitude was something we faked in order to not hurt grandma's feelings when we opened her gifts.

So this knowledge that abundance is not about money is new for me. My riches are now like this bowl, pictured above. The outside is a soft white, which absorbs all light, and all the beauty is on the inside.

Radiance

Today we drove up on the Blue Ridge parkway where the leaves are peaking. There was a reverent hush as people of all nationalities with many blending accents and languages gazed with drunken rapture at oranges so deep that you might warm your hands just to touch them, and reds so surreal that perhaps fairies and trolls partied last night and splattered magic paint around. I saw young city girls clutching bouquets of giant leaves, gathered like precious jewels. A tall man with his toddler son shuffled through piles, and the man's face was lost in his own boyhood, while the young one had eyes like an old man who understood everything. It was beyond amazing.

And I see how this beauty, fierce and urgent, informs my life. When I shut my eyes now, the colors are still there. And when I hold my husband tonight, just before sleep, we will float through crisp air, soaring, gold and red and orange, and filled with light.

What I do not know, exactly

I have been wondering about Divine Guidance lately. Are we born into this world to meet up with certain people, to develop specific inner gifts, to leave behind a pre-ordained list of accomplishments? I do not know.

What I do know is that the success that I've had in the past year could not have come about except as a reaction to what seemed like a tragedy at the time, and that I prayed, meditated, visualized, and asked for Divine Guidance continuously in the first month after my husband lost his job last year. It's almost funny to me looking back, because I was, at the time, a news junkie, so my daily routine consisted of reading blogs and watching cable news reporting on the international economic collapse and impending Depression. I needed prayer to deal with the fear!

I was also living inside many faulty beliefs, such as that no one would buy pottery online and pay all that extra shipping, that selling to high class galleries was the pinnacle of accomplishment and so selling my own work would be backsliding, and that I couldn't stand out amongst the millions of internet shops and sites anyway.

So I only tried Etsy out of sheer desparation, and because it was healthier to immerse myself in a world of artists and vintage sellers as opposed to the paralyzing unemployment statistics, reports of new layoffs, home foreclosures, and corporations going bankrupt. As a bonus, I had my husband at home full time, a former operations manager, now executive VP of Operations. He set up the sales tracking, packing, and shipping systems for my Etsy store, and once all that was running smoothly, he found another job.

I also found a freedom on Etsy to sell more indie, one of a kind experimental pieces, which I've always preferred making. These are harder to market through galleries because of the gallery mark up, but I can sell these easily and affordably on Etsy. I am much happier working now, more excited to go into my studio, and I've close to doubled my income!

The luminary above, titled SUCCESS, has a bee and a dandelion, which are symbols of happiness at work, and spreading fertile seeds, or growing one's resources and wealth. I surrounded myself with these images as my Etsy store blossomed.

Did these images help guide my life? Did The One Who Sustains Us darken my world, and then illuminate the path that lead to my highest and best good? I do not know exactly.

stray cat

There was a stray cat living in a barn behind our house all summer. He watched us from a distance. He was luxurious fur stretched on a skeleton, with eyes of fire. I left food around for 2 months, and he finally allowed me to approach and pet him. He was wild, unpredictable, and would hiss and scratch unexpectedly, so I was as wary as he was, but still, I kept approaching. My husband has allergies, and we already have 2 cats, so he did not want another housecat, and I knew I couldn't keep him. Yesterday he showed up with a collar! So my "Boots" found a home!

Kindness is a mysterious force that gets inside us all and changes us and makes us easier to be around. The family I was born into was not kind; we were nice. It is not the same. Nice things are said and done with an implied contract in mind. Some reward is expected for being nice, whereas kindness shines like the sun with no agenda.

A teacher once said to me, "Opening your windows does not guarantee that the wind will blow through your house, but keeping them shut guarantees that it will not. Love is like the wind. You have to be open, or it can't come in."

Kindness is a call to open.