We got our pottery stones/pebbles from my class. I might have spoken too quickly when I said pottery is out of my system after fifty years of longing in mere two sessions. In the second half of the four week course, you could say, overall, I had a blast, and now I'm addicted to the idea of making gazillion stones/pebbles. Though the required slab plates and such will remain unseen by the world forever; are you kidding me? They are seriously hideous, and you might have heard me scream, "UGLY UGLY UGLY" inside my head if you were paying attention, but they were useful in learning how to handle clay. Which is not easy. Anyway, here are my lovelies.
I love the color blue, but not this glaze. In future, I will combine it with the charcoal, or white, or something else. I shaped the smooth stones, Ben the uneven ones, (two with the complex pattern at the bottom and one with two cuts in the middle,) at home over Easter, and I did all the glazes in class.
Now when I make stuff, it helps to have a mind-picture of how they look completed, and here I had beach rocks in mind. I then strive to make things as close to the mind-picture as I can, as an object separate from myself. Ben, on the other hand, has a completely different way of making things, which I didn't notice as he sat across the kitchen table, but showed me after these came home.
Every piece, stones and small vessels, ten in all save possibly two or three, has his body imprint, and how he loves to hold them and use them. What a renegade! And it's just the way he is in life: uncomplicated, WYSIWYG, straight, honest, unpretentious, and unapologetic. And that's rare in a culture, Japanese, where appearance is important and one's maturity can be measured in tactical use of Honne vs Tatemae. His way of making is so foreign to me, but I envy his childlike joy. I can't even begin to contemplate if/how I can incorporate this into my weaving, or if I want to, but here we are.
What next? Well, Esther is having an Intro II course in June/July. I need to weigh my desire to make more rocks vs. hunkering down to get serious, once again, about my weaving now. Stay tuned.
I love the pottery stones! But then, I've never been able to resist collecting rocks. The ways yours are glazed are quite appealing.
ReplyDeleteInteresting observations about the differences between yours and Ben's creative styles. Would his be comparable to Saori weaving? Now you've got me thinking! I'm wondering if exploring others' creative processes would help one grow in one's own creative art.
Leigh,
DeleteI, too, love stones and pebbles and collect them on the beaches rather than shells. Some of the glazing, I could not remember how I did them mere days after I'd done them, to my great disappointment.
Ben is not familiar with Saori, but I say they are not related. For him, it's been about transferring, literally, his physical shape onto clay. Having said that, the definition of Saori seems me to be just like their weaving: it's whatever you want it to be.
Exploring other processes are fun, I think. Sometimes I learn a lot and adopt them, but sometimes, after trying them out, I learn they are not for me and discard/reject them. But there's learning in either cases, and dare I say, usually fun/meaningful.