Success and Inspiration

The tape is off!  I'm no longer adorned with flourescent-colored therapy tape.  I even threw for the first time in a long time on Wednesday without wearing gloves.  (The jury is still out on whether I like using bare hands or gloved hands better, though.)  Physical therapy is helping, and I think I'm starting to heal.  Of course, my first impulse is to abuse the wrist enough to determine if I'm really 100% or if it's weak, so I'm trying to still be ginger. 

I spent most of Wednesday night trimming the bowls that I threw last weekend.  I got a little refresher lesson in how to place a foot and how to even it out to be level.  The act of trimming is so fun for me.  Take a leather-hard pot, apply a sharp tool, and see trimming fly around as you spin the wheel.  Something about making a big pile of clay bits makes me feel productive.

When I made these platters, I tried a technique Cary had demonstrated:  throwing a cylinder and then pulling the walls down to make a "bowl"/platter.  (Plate or platter is probably more accurate than bowl, since the bottom is flat and not round it isn't REALLY a bowl...but it's a 'bowl' class, so we'll stretch the definition a bit.)

This platter is the largest thing I've thrown this year so far.  As I made it I already decided how I'd be glazing it, an unusually prepared thing for me to do.  It's white stoneware with blue slip painted along the flat bottom with a bit of texture which will catch the glaze.  I also indented all along the rim to make a bunch of little grooves; those will also catch the glaze to settle thickly.  This will be what's quickly becoming my 'signature' glaze - Ben's Amber.  It's usually used as an oxidation glaze, but in the standard reduction kiln, it is a neutral tan/brown that's a bit translucent, allowing design and texture to show through.  In areas where it's thicker it has a blue tone or hue, so I think the slip at the bottom of the platter will compliment it really well. 

On another note, I got a Groupon email today with a side-offer of discounted admission to CraftBoston Spring the weekend of March 25th-27th.  It's a show at the convention center in Boston, and there will be over 200 craftspeople showing and selling their work.  There will be folks who work in various media, not just clay, but I'm tickled to go; I really think I could get a lot of ideas on how to alter and decorate my pots. 

Now that I'm getting a bit more confident in my throwing abilities, I really need to start considering how to 'make them mine'.  I emailed a few friends to see if folks would be interested in attending (if you're reading and would like to go, let me know!)

The next semester will start at Mudflat in April, so I've been looking at class schedules to decide which one I want to take.  I wanted to take another class with Cary, but he's only going to be teaching one class during mornings on a work day, so that's probably not going to happen.  I am considering the "Altering Thrown Forms" class with Wayne.  I've been amazed to watch folks take something round and end up with an oval casserole...and I have a feeling that's just the beginning.  I tell you, the more pottery I do, the more I realize there is yet to learn. 

I'm planning a marathon pottery day this Saturday.  I can't wait to glaze some bisqued pots, clear off my shelf, and make way for some more!

The pottery-meditation/religion connection

I started this blog for a compulsory assignment as part of an E-commerce class.  I started the class in March, then dropped it.  As you can tell from the post archive over on the right, the new semester started again in September.  I just got my grade (A!), and some comments from the evaluator.  He said, "To some practitioners, doing pottery is a form of Zen meditation: yourself, the mind, the hands with the spinning mud, an eventually achieving inner peace."  I can completely understand that. 

I've never tried meditation.  I know many people consider prayer to be a form of it, but although I was raised in a Christian religion, my 'practice' of prayer was more imitation than practice...just enough to placate my parents.  (Alas, and one wonders why my devotion didn't continue past the teenage years.) 

There have been times, at the end of a long day and mighty traffic competition to get back into the city, where I've sat at a wheel content to just feel the clay circle 'round between my fingers.  I can just let my mind wander (or shut down) and feel myself relax.  It's clay-therapy, and one of the things I'm missing about not doing pottery this semester.  [Tangent:  If I could consider wheel-throwing as a form of mental centering, then a wheel should be considered medical equipment and therefore tax-deductible.  I'll send a note to the IRS and see if they agree.]

Pottery is certainly an 'ancient' art...generations have been doing it for centuries.  Initially functional, I would posit, ultimately the skill of making vessels and tools for practical purposes let itself to the practice of making items for entertainment, worship, etc.  Even my Christian education didn't imprint me with memory that pottery was mentioned in the Bible, though.  Turns out it is...

According to Don Friesen, The formative power of faith became vivid for Jeremiah one day on a visit to a potter's house. There he saw the potter working at his wheel, and as the potter worked his wheel Jeremiah recalls,"The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him. Then the word of the Lord came to me:  ‘Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? ... Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.'"— (Jeremiah 18:4-6)

Another site discussing Chakra meditation says, "Imagine throwing a wet ball of clay onto the center of the spinning wheel and then with your hand around the moist clay, thumb on top, find the center of the clay and slowly push it to the center of the wheel, breathing deeply from your abdomen as the wheel spins with the clay centered perfectly."

As part of this (rare) 24 hours of religious awareness, there was a lot of press in the news yesterday about how US practicing members of various religions, atheists and agnostics fared on a quiz about religion.  I had heard about it, but not seen the actual quiz until Rachel sent it to me today.  The average for atheists and agnostics (my 'peeps) was 20.9 correct out of 32:  a dismal score, but better than the rest of the population...depressing.  I took it and got 28/32.  The competitive side of me was disappointed that I'd gotten 4 wrong, but I did find it ironic that one of my errors was regarding the religion I was raised with.  (Sorry, Mom.)

I am more convinced than ever that pottery will need to be a longer-term comonent of my life, if not for anything else than my 'centeredness' as a human being.  What a way to pick a hobby!