Drop it on the floor

Four years ago, I was challenged by a painting professor.  He was the one who was watching our senior studio; he was the one who shoved me onto a roller-coaster-feeling of trying to define art.

And it started very simply.

“Hey, Allison, how long would it take you to throw a bowl?  Not too big, nothing fancy”

“Less than five minutes.”

“Ok.  Will you throw one and then drop it on the floor?”

…”what?”

“I just want to see what would happen.  Please?”

And this grown man, with his master’s degree, looked at me with so much hope, so much glee, that of course I said yes.

So I find myself cradling a newly-thrown bowl, fresh off the wheel, clay very wet, standing on a table.  The 13 other kids in senior studio are gathered around, as Logan has told them all that I’m going to drop a bowl from on top of the table, and this is, of course, entertaining to the world.

I hold it high and let go; it lands with a soft plop.

The walls bent in, the foot curved around.

Logan asks if he can keep it.

I say sure, and scrape it off the floor.

Find myself starting to be ok with broken forms, smashed forms, twisted forms.  Start to question what a good pot is, and what it means, and how I can break those ideas and end up with something interesting.

Not necessarily good, but infinitely more interesting.

So I sit here, another snow day (this winter is great for musing but less great for completing projects!) starting to think about ways in which I can switch up my practice again.

Because there are technical skills I want to master — and there are infinite paths I could take to conceive of those paths.  And I want to walk down so many of them, and move from medallions and sculptures and formal dish ware and back seamlessly, beautifully — but most importantly, interestingly.

Logan still has the piece that I dropped on the floor.  Bisque-fired and sitting on a shelf above his desk — a testament to what asking bizarre questions and following through on them can get you.

A ‘snow’-studio day

Small victories today:

• I’ve found a glaze combination that fills me with exultation and makes my roommate want to proposition my pieces.  It’s the colors of a peacock’s fan, striated and melted one to the next, each one deliberately distinct, the teal-purple-blues-greens all fitting together.
• I put together the two teapots I’ve been procrastinating on.  Had to throw new spouts, but once I made those and pulled some new handle options, it was relatively easy to trim down the bodies of the teapots and poke some holes — in the to-be-included tea strainers, in the body so that the tea can flow out the spout — and then add on the slightly hardened spout and handle.  Still wet enough to move easily, pretty much the perfect squishiness to add on.
• I threw all the bits for another teapot!  And two to-be-mugs.
• The glaze kiln that came out had my itty bitty teapots in it. The larger, more attitudinal, teapot checked out fine – it behaved itself, and looks lovely.  The smaller one had a lid issue where I wasn’t sure the lid was going to come off, and I only had to go one step down the path of deciding which blunt instrument would separate the pieces the best.

Deliberations:

• I should make a chuck.  For real.
• Firebrick is good for knocking lids off of teapots.
• Our yellow salt glaze is probably my favorite by itself, and it looks lovely when placed next to many other things.

Freeze-dried fingers and Unfinished Teapots

This Polar Vortex is not too damaging when I’m tucked into the main room of the studio.  We have the heater on – drying out the clay, keeping us from throwing with popsicle-fingers, radiating the idea of warmth to the reaches of our artistic cubicle.

It’s a strange sort of world, where I have to keep reminding myself that cold air can hold less moisture, so the pieces will dry out faster.  A white world, where walking half an hour in the cold is a seemingly smarter choice than digging out my little orange car and driving her along the untrustworthy roads.  It’s a strange sort of world, where I make it into the studio for hours on a Wednesday because of a snow day, and realize that I won’t be able to be in to trim until at least Friday – and still have trimming I should do, a week and a half later.  It’s a world where I start to appreciate dry cleaner’s plastic more than I generally do, where covering and keeping in moisture allows me to hold time back until I’m ready to finish – in this case, to trim down the bottom of a teapot, to add spout and handle, to check that the tea strainer and the lid still fit the way I want them to fit.

And some did dry out faster than I wanted it to – which leads to either bad trimming jobs, or half-hearted trimming jobs, or me obsessing and breaking things.  Joy upon joys.  But I like to use my pieces for glaze tests, if nothing else, and decided to experiment.

A bisque firing later, and I’m working out in the back room.  It’s unheated, unless we’re firing either the electric or gas kilns, the former of which hides, a dishwasher or washing machine with rounded edges, the latter which takes up the space of a small automobile, reaching towards the ceiling, waiting to be filled with glazed work.  We keep the buckets of glaze in the back, waiting in stacks to be used.

The names of glazes have always curled, comfortable, around my hands:  temmuku. shino. teadust.  Matte or shiny, those named after specific people share space with more generic ideas: Laura’s turquoise sharing the latest gossip with Val Cushing’s black, the yellow salt and pseudosalt commiserating about the fact that neither one is actually a salt glaze.  And, often, these colors do cover me up to the elbow.  Though we have dipping tongs, I like to hold onto my pieces and dip them by hand.  The chance of me dropping them to the bottom of the bucket seems minimized that way; the chance of me ending up with an armful of iron-oxide rich slop is increased.

Big 5 gallon buckets – though I’m mixed drinks in buckets this large, it was never classy – sit, some filled to the brim.  The solids sink to the bottom, sometimes solidifying in a rather obnoxious way.  Some glazes, we keep a toilet brush in the bucket, others we use a battery-powered drill.

So in an unheated room, with a pile of work to glaze, I reach into the buckets.

They are so cold.  So, so cold.  I am glad that our studio has the option of hot water.

Words, and letting things air out

So I’m being bad and not going into the studio today.  Despite the fact that I have two teapots that need to be trimmed & assembled soon.  Instead, I’m dealing with life-thinky-thoughts.

I broke, last year.  As if I was a freshly thrown bowl, cut off the wheel ever so carefully, lifted with two sliding metal pieces — and then my potter stood on the table, climbed on the wedging board, and dropped me.

I’ve been having difficulty getting through that – it was no less and no more than the cruelty of teenagers and a lack of support and a feedback loop of feeling like I wasn’t doing good enough so I did less so I knew I wasn’t doing good enough… ad nauseum.

This year, though.  I scraped myself off the floor when I left the old job, but I was still shell-shocked, still dealing with the bits of dried clay and hairs and air pockets left from the fall.  I think my period of healing took the time to totally dry out, smash into bits, and rehydrate.  I have come around to the correct consistency for thought. I think that – nearly six months later – I have started to wedge myself back into the shape I want to be.

I do not need to be all-effacing.  I am not doing a terribly important job right now, and nothing would fall apart if I did not do what I am doing — but I am doing what I should be doing, and I am beginning to grow comfortable.  My lumps and bumps mixed in – I am enjoying what I am doing, and I am learning from doing and observing –  my air pockets slammed out.  I am beginning to feel more confident, to feel that I do not need to be perfect, to be doing my best.

Knowing that I am not the best with words, or faces, but working on both of those things.  Knowing that I am not the best at raising up a cylinder, of reaching a piece into the sky while keeping enough support underneath it, I am beginning to be comfortable speaking out, again.  Accepting my intellect, again.  Challenging my intellect, again.  I am beginning to think about going back to school, and beginning to believe that I can be respected, and cherished, and raised up.

Pulling Handles, or, Things I’m Good At (and those I’m not)

Things I feel like I’m good at:

• pulling handles & attaching them
• trimming cups and bowls
• throwing cups and bowls
• throwing off the hump
• enjoying making teapots — and making tea strainers that fit into tea pots!
• wax resist
• fitting lids with tall flanges

Things that definitely need work:

• making matched sets
• making plates
• making tall forms – vases or pitchers

Techniques that I want to work on (or continue working on):

• mold-making
• knuckling-up tall forms, collaring in to form bottles
• creating my own ribs (old credit cards)
• alternative firing techniques (smoke, raku, carbon resist, carbon trapping)
• working larger from plans (& making plans and following them)
• slab building, pinch pots, coiling
• creating & throwing/building with formers
• creating & throwing with agate
• alternative surface techniques (oxides, monoprinting, stencils and stamps,
• creating oval forms
• ug.plates
• throwing in sections – for height, form
• lids with galleries
• spout shapes
• pulling handles on the pot
• lugs
• making a chuck
• slip trailing/feathering