A Few New Pots
What's new in the studio? people occasionally ask, and I never quite know what to say. I get the question – we're sitting down to lunch, maybe, the coffee is arriving, what is happening, they’re saying, what has changed? What would make good lunch conversation. A lot of times though when I unload the kiln my work looks more and more the same. In a good way. It gets more and more true, more unwavering in being just what it is, and I'm happy. That’s hard to explain. I think sometimes people ask that question and listen hopefully for me to say that I'm making progress – that the new work is 'better' than the work I made before. Maybe it is, who’s to say. As I unload the kiln though I'm not watching for improvement. Not that I think my pots are that great. It's all hard to put into words, and as lunchtime conversation continues on, the check arriving, I never do manage to give a good answer. What is new in the studio?
Maybe a better approach is to note what's happening with a few of the pieces I unloaded from the kiln yesterday. I pull them out, still warm, and transport them to the room where I photograph. Usually it's here when I first 'see' them, and begin to notice what they're like, or trace how they got here.
A month or two ago I was standing in the kitchen swirling the tea leaves in the bottom of the day before's teapot, turning it over, shaking to tumble them out into the trash, the kettle boiling, the day advancing, my mind also swirling, and wham. The teapot handle hit the side of the trash bin and broke. This was a teapot I'd used for years.
That same day, or right around then, someone in class asked about making teapots, and we got into exploring ways they can work, look here's another way the lid can go, see how it can just sit on top of the form? Or here – how about throwing the handle on the wheel instead of pulling it. I know it’s a cliché that destruction is how new things happen. I almost never keep work I make in a class, I liked the synchronicity of this moment though, breaking my teapot & then having to consider new ways of making one, not really on purpose, not the usual teapots I usually make. I hesitated at the end of class, the new teapot poised over the reclaim bucket. Wait - I could actually use this.
Possibly, my mind was swirling with thoughts about a possible workshop when I was hastily & carelessly making tea that day. I've been considering a curriculum, and imagining using giving workshops as a way to travel around a bit. Get out of the studio, meet other potters, get better at sharing ideas, at showing something I sometimes do that could be useful to another potter.
Which would be what exactly? Not a different way to make handles, fun as that could be. Something different. Something new. I was in the studio one evening and I tried a technique for making cups that I remember doing when I first was learning to center clay, on an old Randall kickwheel. I'd take the cups over to my mentor's studio for firing, and he would look dubiously at them. Which I get. I'd throw the sides of the cup only, then cut this off and let it dry, then squash a pancake of clay between my hands and use this as a floor of the cup, then use whatever scraps I had left as a handle. I made a batch more of these and my workshop curriculum began to coalesce. It'll be about finding new ways to work, and interrupting your patterns and rituals – what rituals do you use to start your studio session? That would be such a great workshop question.
It'll be about interruption, and routine, and how to reconnect with what is new. How to get back to making pots the way you did before you knew what you were doing, and had a lot of expectations.
Another minor event of destruction at the studio six weeks ago: I was running the mixer and heard a characteristic snapping sound. Click. I turned the mixer off, it was too late though. The tool, whatever it was, that got included in a reclaim bucket just got broken in half by the stainless steel bars the clay is shoved through as the mixer turns. Woops. I touched the on button again. The clay went around and around. I saw something & reached in to grab it out – the aluminum handle of a needle tool. Minus the sharp steel needle itself. Oh. This is trouble. I can't have new clay go back out into the studio & onto the wedging table with, somewhere, a needle ready to poke into someone's hand.
I unloaded the mixer & took all the clay home in big blocks. I wrapped it up and tried not to think about it – I'll have to cut all that clay up into tiny chunks till I find that needle. After a few weeks of procrastination I started pulling the wire through one block after another. By now the blocks had dried a bit under their plastic wrap, and the wire made beautiful loopy swirls as I cut, hunting for the needle. Wait. Isn't there a way to make things like this – what is it called – kirinuki? kurinuki. I looked it up. You carve up blocks and hollow them out. Great – I know nothing about how to do this – another perfect workshop topic.
I made a batch of these - easy. They kind of make themselves, and the forms are unpredictable. The workshop wants to incorporate that - discovering your piece, not anticipating it, watching it get made, rather than using skills of making you already know you have.
Finally, on the photo table, as I unloaded the kiln yesterday, I got a few pics of this piece, above, that does in fact look the same, that is not new, the faceted cup. I remember making these to load the first kiln I built, and remember the first cheese slicer I got to do the faceting — I’ve been through a couple since then. The tools of making wear out & are replaced but the cups continue, and there would hardly be a way to tell if this one was made last month or in the year 2003, the year I formulated this glaze, made from wood ash, nepheline syenite (a ground-up igneous rock that lowers the melting point of the mixture) feldspar, porcelain clay, and iron oxide.
I should remember this cup, and how happy I am about it. I should keep coming back to this. I’ll get the next kiln loaded soon, and hope to report, next time I have lunch with someone, that the work in it looks more the same than ever.
