Fresh out of the kiln, here’s one of my more successful cut-lidded forms. The unglazed underside shows a charcoal-black clay body. Heat and gravity pulled the glaze down below the join, making for a delightful contrast. There might be a teapot in the future with this clay, glaze, and cut-lid approach.
Today my daughter Kate treated me to a Netflix binge-watching of LUKE CAGE, and a theater viewing of the new Star Wars movie ROGUE ONE. She also brewed me some coffee and took this picture of me with my coffee cup:
When I say “my coffee cup,” it is and isn’t. I made the cup a little more than 16 years ago. It is signed and dated on the bottom, thus:
Though it’s dated October 9, 2000, the signature and date were done when the ware was in the greenware stage. It was then bisque fired, glazed, and glaze fired. I would guess the finished product came out of one of the gas kilns at Phoenix College right around the end of October, 2000.
The cup is ungainly and otherwise imperfect, especially its handle, but it feels friendly to the grip and its lip meets mine warmly. But when I say it is and IS NOT mine, that’s to say that the cup resides with Joni, my ex-wife, and Kate, our daughter and Joni’s co-tenant. When Joni and I declared divorce, which was finalized five years and two days ago, I left and the cup stayed. It is only when I come around to the place I lived for more than 22 years that I get to see and interact with this cup.
But I do have full visitation rights, and bragging rights: This is Exhibit A to establish that I can make a coffee cup with my bare hands, with or without the use of a potter’s wheel. (One of my coil-built cups would be Exhibit B.) I fully intend to make more cups in 2017, which would end a more than two years’ hiatus. I miss being One With Ware.
Whirling on the potter’s wheel-pristine
Energy enfolds her–velveteen
Nor dare the negative oppress
Discernment; Artisan finesse
In crafting ware that’s singular & clean
Today Wendi Sorensen, one-time (and for all I know, still-is) international corporate attorney, put her wares on display for a holiday sale. She has worked steadily and hard to achieve that lighter-than-air feeling a master potter may impart to the ware. Several years ago her work showed that her heart was in the right place, and, with the right amount of effort and perseverance, could shine. Today it shone, and I was glad to congratulate her on her marvelous achievement.
She happily agreed to the “mug shot” below. The mug was still hot from its 18-hour incubation in her Skutt electric kiln; thus the protective gloves. The glaze is cone 5; the fine shape is pure elbow grease applied over years and years of wheel-wielding.
She is a good soul, and though I see her only once in a blue moon (the time before today was at the now-long-defunct Unlimited Coffee), I always come away from our reconnectings filled with her good energy. Soar on, Ms. Sorensen!!
Alas, my participation as a displaying artist at the Village Gallery of Local Artists will be ending at the end of this month. These two items, both made in the 20th Century, will be the last pieces I add to my display. I do love the Gallery, and I will miss being part of it.
The middle name starts with a W. People would ask, “What’s the W stand for?” and often they thought they heard this in reply: “Whatever you say it is, it’ll be right.” But what was actually said was, “Whatever you say it is, it’ll be Wright.”
“Wright” means “maker.” In my more pompous moments I have said it means “Creator.” But its original meaning referred mostly to things of wood; thus were dubbed Shipwrights and Wheelwrights. Later, Playwrights. Perhaps one fine day Dreamwright will be a legitimate profession. One may dream.
As a Wright, it is incumbent upon me to make things. Here is something I made in September of 2005, via the process described a couple of posts ago as “the superheated glory of RAKU:”
And here is something I made in July of 2008, and “digitally remastered” just this morning:
The text is a triple-acrostic sonnet that goes like this:
Full fathom five to fifty off the reef
For all the Captain’s faithful to his staff
Onsurgent waves tall as a tall Giraffe
Obsess, convulse, and bloom like an O’Keeffe
Let’s pack it in lads this is so unreal
Let’s lash the sail and say that I’m a fool
Let’s learn our lesson and go back to school
Let’s NOT feed lampreys–sucks to be a meal
O MY, spake Bo’s’n–I’m already Jello
O LORD cried Brother–I donwanna halo
Whoopee! said Zooey–why so bleakly stay low
Why Shore said SureShot we’ll be coolly mellow
West of the Sun, Wise are the Woken Few
Whip out the World Wide Web O Brothers New
I love that I have made two such diverse-but-not-opposite things. About the poem I have a perspective just shy of six years from its creation, telling me that despite its adroitness of meter, rhyme and storytelling within the straitjacket of the acrostic form, scholars of the future will not take it seriously due to its scattershot clownishness. That’s moot, though: Not only did I make it, but it reflects my mind with a good transparency. And so in conclusion, ye Creatives, ye Makers, ye Wrights–go thou and do likewise, with my blessings and bonhomie!
Creation begets digression begets more creation. You want to know more about Latvia. You find a map of Latvia. It occurs to you that the curvature of a bisque-fired teapot might suit a drawing of the map of Latvia more than flat paper would. You draw Latvia and surrounds on your teapot. Lacking a good camera, but having a webcam that works if you record video, you do so. You do a print screen of a still from the video. It is none too good, but intriguing. You click “New Post” and copy and paste the title of the previous post. You tweak the title, which itself a tweak of the one before that one. Here we are. No guarantees that we’ll be stopping at “seven of seven.” There may well be an “eight of eight” or even an “eight of seven.” That’s Creation for you.
Recently I read John D. MacDonald’s THE GOOD OLD STUFF and MORE GOOD OLD STUFF. Here is some Good Old Stuff of mine from the last century.
Two days ago I eagerly put new greenware into my new-but-old kiln, closed the lid, flipped the switch to High, and went away for a few hours. Upon my return I switched the kiln off and pulled out the lower peephole-stopper. The glow was red-orange, the pyrometric cone was not in front of the peephole where I’d put it, and there was a shard of broken ware in view. Something terrible had happened.
The next day, the kiln having cooled, I opened the lid to find the bowl, the mug and the box had all shattered at their bases. The lid to the box, though skewed atop the box itself, was intact. But what good is a lid without what it is lid to?
My best guess as to what happened is I had not waited long enough for my ware to be completely bone dry. There is a valuable lesson here. The trouble is, I keep RElearning it–and then reverting.
Friends, be patient with your ware, with your friends, with your issues. Do the right thing, and in its right time. Don’t let this happen to you! [sad face]
PS–bonus points and bragging rights to anyone who knows what title the title of this post is based on. [smiley face]
Today the Potter’s Wheel came back to life. What a pleasure it is to again feel the clay’s interaction, wielding well-worn tools to coax designer dirt into appropriately axial symmetry!
Yesterday I got a call from Suzen of the Village Gallery, where I have ceramics on display and for sale. Someone from New Jersey wanted to buy one of my vases, and wanted it shipped to New Jersey. The vase had a $15.00 price tag. What, Suzen asked, did I want to charge for shipping?
This was a first for me at this gallery, and one of only two times in my years of stuffmaking that the issue of shipping had come up. “It’ll be another $15.00,” I said in three seconds or so, feeling a) like I’d just lost a sale; b) trepidant that the customer would go for it, and the shipping would be more; c) super-stoked that someone wanted it enough to pay more to have it shipped. Suzen said she’d call me back, and in just a couple of minutes, she did: Sold!
So my mission is to get this puppy safely to Medford, New Jersey, and contain shipping and handling costs. Even if it’s more than $15 to ship, I will feel victorious, and grateful to New Jersey, not only for Bruce Springsteen and Kevin Smith, but for the fellow in Medford who made my day.
One with Clay, Image and Text 