I always say that If you unload the kiln and encounter one very good piece, you've had a very good firing. There may be a hundred pieces in the kiln that come off the warm shelves and onto ware boards and back inside – still. You never count the others, you look for the one.

Next day we put on sunscreen. And neoprene. We turned off our phones. Hi, I said bravely, and tried to join the group. Clay, of course, is always an ending and a beginning — it is decomposed rock, it has weathered and ceased being what it is and lost its form. Also it is impressionable, ready, malleable as the first day of a river trip. Nothing is decided - anything could happen.

I took for granted that my time wasn’t worth much. If a piece I’d spent half a day on didn’t work out back it went into the bucket — no big deal. I took it for granted that doing art involved wasting enormous amounts of time. Not everything you try works. I found this liberating. Wasting time is a talent, more important than centering or matte glazes or the other talents a potter might be proud of.

The vase is about what you can’t see - the hidden volume that’s in there. What’s invisible defines the form, and when you look at a vase and you like it, what you really like is something beyond the physical - it’s the immaterial, weighty, contained, volume of the vase.

One of the numerous reasons to live with art, not that you need a reason, is that you never know, when encountering an example of it, a book, a movie, a ceramic bowl, a new song, how much of what you notice is really in you and how much is in the work itself, if any.

Fantastic students this summer, flying in from around the country, and great teaching - Green River Pottery’s A3 studio is honored to have had some gifted, funny, experienced, and inspiring teachers working closely with us through some hot afternoons.

Bowls often have a hidden quality that platters lack - a shifting, musical, essence that you can’t see but feel. Bowls are more mysterious and cosmic - you use them more every day, though.

After a while I stopped taking photos of pottery, partly because I visited either people’s studios or museums where photography was prohibited, which I kind of liked — allows you to concentrate. Leaving the cities I was impressed by the ragged rural landscape, the steep hills and little farms, woodpiles and junk piles