Today at PIP Coffee and Clay these two items came from the bisque kiln. The one on the left is a closed vessel with a cut-out lid. I have given it to PIP’s barista and resident sculptor Nadia L as a wedding present. She married her sweetheart Daniel some weeks ago. “Glaze it any way you want,” I told her.
The form on the right, while avian, is not quite a bird. Look closely and you’ll see a host of weirdnesses, because in the joy of sculpting, adherence to reality went out the window.
I’m still here at PIP, enjoying sparkling mineral water and waiting for 1:30 PM, when my second 3-hour session begins. I feel the mojo, and have a lot to do!
there seemed to be murmurs coming from the front room/which since i live alone and have no radio/was creepy and scary
i swung the door to the front room open/to silence/to no murmurs/to just whispery traffic noise/and the high-pitched soundthread/of mild tinnitis
i closed the connecting door and went back/to bed/and soon dozed/but in minutes woke/to murmuring
marched to the door but stopped/listened/couldn’t hear much/but it was more than traffic noise
carefully silently opened the door
the sound stopped
closed the door but not completely/and at the edge of audibility/there seemed to be more murmuring
got an idea got my phone/opened the sound recorder app/set it to record/left the phone in the front room near the birds/went to bed
drowsed/dozed/sank into/the velvet starscape/of slumb THEN A CAR ALARM WENT OFF RIGHT BY THE BEDROOM DOOR BWEEP BWEEP BWEEP BWEEP EE-AH EE-AH EE-AH EE-AH KEEZO KEEZO KEE–
then abruptly ended
i went back into the front room/got my phone and pressed stop/and the display said 3:14 and i pushed the play arrowhead
and there WAS a sound as if of distant voices/but i could not parse individual words/except perhaps near the end
hard to tell but it sounded like a hoarse old crow diffused in the fog of distance
“he needs to make more of us”
followed by an indistinct murmur of bird-assent AND THEN THE CAR ALARM WENT OFF BOTH ON THE RECORDING AND OUTSIDE THE WINDOW BWEEP BWEE*
i stopped the playback/at the exact instant the second car alarm stopped
a potter a sponge an x-acto knife a potter’s wheel a wire tool a needle tool a bucket of water a trimming tool and five pounds of white sandless clay
made a globular vase form let it firm up cut it free from the wheel head turned the vase upside down carefully centered and buttressed with a thick clay roll
trimmed away excess clay righted the vase centered and buttressed it again
and then the needle tool made guidelines the x-acto knife sliced the form into segments and the clay segments were baked in a kiln
and the potter took the fired-clay segments and tried several arrangements and arrived at one that felt super-right but needed something
and the search for that something amid already-fired oddments yielded a tiny egg shape and a corpuscular micronest for it to perch on
the brave gunmetal-glazed bird // this bird began as an intangible idea of defiance / and then whirled around as clay on a potter’s wheel /her vase shape changed with the slice of a needle tool and the folding-in of her body / with sculpted neck and vestigial wings and tail feathers added / and her head formed of pressure of clay against thumb / the blunt end of the needle tool making eyepits / her ungainly beak a folded rhombus of clay slip&scored to her head / and her head slip&scored to her neck / and tilted back so she could give her wild eyes / to heaven
Here is my latest sculpted bird. I make them because they tell me to. They also tell me that they’ll start getting really good if I stick with it a few hundred more or so.
Here are two of my recent bird sculptures. One is glazed, one unglazed, and I may leave the unglazed one as is because it is nicely ghostlike in contrast to its mate. If my diabolical plans come to fruition, they will be worth at least $1000 US each in less than two years. But I’d be glad to sell the both of them TODAY ONLY for a grand total of $100.00 plus shipping (free delivery in the Phoenix, AZ area, though). Any interested party may either leave a comment on this post or e-mail me at onewithclay@hotmail.com. Deadline is midnight Mountain Standard Time today, May 29, 2023. Support the Arts, Friends!!
Last Saturday I put my hands on clay for the first time in forever. And I resumed my Weird Bird series with this “Scorpion Bird,” so named due to the resemblance of the beak to a scorpion’s tail and stinger. I return to PIP Coffee Plus Clay this Wednesday to put final touches on it, and then it will go in the oven. Here’s hoping 2023 will be the year of becoming fully One With Clay again!
One with Clay, Image and Text 