it’s been a really busy semester already.  in addition to the class i take with the other post-bacs i’ve decided to take a throwing class.

unlike a lot of the artists i’ve met, i came to ceramics through hand building, not the wheel and haven’t really ever taken a proper throwing class.

my first clay class, grade 9, 14 years old, i don’t even remember there being wheels.  i never even gave it a thought.  we made pinch pots, coil vases, carved out boxes, piggy banks and stylized figures.  a lot of my work from that time still peppers my parents house (which isn’t embarrassing at all) and while the work wasn’t thrown, a large majority of it was functional.  incense burners, mirror frames, tea pots, etc.

in the cramped space which would house the ceramics studio for the majority of my years there, my teacher would play country radio.  if anyone complained, he’d turn it off altogether.  making things out of clay was totally different than any other method i’d used before.  three dimensionally i could actually make the thing i conceived of in my head, which was definitely not the case with two-d materials.  the translation from 3d to 2d was just not something i was designed to do.  this feeling of satisfaction, this amazing new skill was giving a country soundtrack and i’ve been a huge pop country fan ever since.

needless to say however, i was not happy for long with our teacher’s cheesy assignments.  (king cone incense burner anyone?) but he had the ubiquitous stack of old ass ceramics monthly’s on the shelves and i would scour them every day, looking for ideas.  i never stopped on the pages full of functional work though.  however few and far between in those old 80’s cms, i would sus out the sculptures and try to replicate them.  to this day i wish i could go back in time and read the captions under those photos that i emulated.  who were these original influential artists?

so yes, hand building has always been my love, the thing burning inside of me seeking an outlet, but functional ware, well, that’s another story.

i love pots.  maybe i love all handmade functional objects, hand bound journals, crocheted caps, hand stitched clothing, but seriously, for reals, i love pots.  of all my collections, hand made pots certainly beats all others out in number.  winter ends, my journal gets full, but i can use my kelly sullivan bowl everyday if i like and bill lennox’s crock holds my cooking utensils all the time.

but i never thought to make them, really, for more than a minute, until now.  and i’m starting to feel the itch.  bowls down, cups up next.  stay tuned…