stephani stephenson on wed 20 feb 08
Thank you Joyce, doug ,and folks for the kindest
comments! Though mel, dang it...(.note to self:careful
about sending any pics to mel... never know where they
will end up..)...and Joyce, the thing about me looking
glamorous.... beauty hint: have photo taken with a
wide angle lens and stand way far in the background,
surrounded by piles of tiles.....illusion and
distance, a 'goil's' best friends!
Eric Suchman always tells me he doesn't read my posts
because they are too long so , OK Eric, time to
bail,NOW!
i haven't been keeping up on the list too much, head
full of thoughts,but... fingers busy glazing, not
typing , lately it seems.
also for those of you , like Deborah who are waiting
to retire to be a full time potter/artist...yes , in a
way i envy you, but also in a way i am glad i made the
move when i did, and sometimes wish i had jumped in
with all fours when i was even younger and could move
mountains, or so it felt....however i am most
impressed by a woman who is a full time attorney and
who loves to get in the clay when she can spare a
moment...i'm sure you will be a kick ass potter when
you retire, and hey, at least you will GET to retire!
i do keep up my health insurance even if to find out,
as i did this week that a nagging dull pain under my
right rib was not, as i feared, a gall bladder going
siwash, or some other unimaginable internal thing...
but it was an inflamed or somewhat banged up rib
cartilage. i told the doctor i could not recall
bashing into anything recently and then she
asked..repetitive injury, do you do anything that
involves repeated bending and lifting? i think my eyes
grew quite wide....do you mean
hmmm..... loading and unloading the kiln every 30
hours for the last 2 months? bending over the metal
walls to rewire the kiln , where my feet lift off the
ground so i can reach the bottom? setting and lifting
heavy ware up and down over and over?
ahhh, well, perhaps she WAS onto something...needless
to say , when the doc looked at me i looked quite
guilty as charged....
BUT! i was THRILLED with the diagnosis and the cure,(
a little ibuprophen if i need it.)... woo hoo! a
little stressed out cartilage. THAT i can live with,
!!!!i have been so proud of taking care of my back,
forgot to consider the ribs. SO now we have another
potter's ailment "potter's ribs" hee hee.
OK> work ethic in the younger generation...first of
all, in this day and age i have been increasingly
reluctant to talk about folks online without their
permission, though i am dying to gab about some of the
guys in the pottery studio.... i will , but no names.
I say guys because there are no young women, which is
too bad, but another post, another time. Where ARE you
young feisty women?! I know you are out there, in fact
i know a couple of you are up in Montana, fiercely
potting your beautiful hearts out.
some of the guys are paid by the hour, some are paid
by the piece. one of them makes platters mostly and is
the fastest handbuilder i have seen...need to turn out
600 square platters with lifted edges, or large ovals?
he is your man...has it down , the drying , all of
it...also loads the meanest , most intricately stacked
bisque kiln you have ever seen, a 100 CF bisque
kiln.... he is 28, a surfer , an athlete, a musician,
an artist...works much harder than i remember my
contemporaries working at that age, and has his skills
down, and also loves the art. high school ceramics
trained, about 8 years work experience. efficient,
elegant, fast. Second handbuilder, 32 years old,
native of El Salvador, in the U.S> legally. he comes
from generations of Mayan potters, been making pottery
since he was a kid. makes his own work which is
starting to get seen...intricate mayan motifs, hand
built and sculpted. he paints, too, and is able to
handle clay in any way and load kilns, pretty much do
anything. he just wants to work in clay. both of these
guys work at least 5 days a week.
wheelthrowers are older, 36, 40, one amazingly , 50-
something. he has is own business as well and comes in
to throw larger pieces occasionally. these guys have
been production potters all their working lives. cut
their teeth throwing everything from lamp bases to
cactus pots. what else can i say? when you see their
production over time it is phenomenal. a solid 5 day
work week, but boy do they look gleeful come Friday.
the paid employees, one with an MFA, early 30s ,
others are all in their early to mid 20s, most have
high school ceramics backgrounds. some don't last too
long, but the regulars are there every day and get
the job done. one handles slipcasting, others handle
glazing and loading unloading kilns, trimming, packing
and shipping, finishing work. the head guy is 40 , a
potter for 20 years, and now he's the business man of
the business, keeps everyone and everything moving
,but still wants to pot. firing kilns late into the
night four - six days a weeks.
it is a young crew. they all surf, a lot of them
say 'dude'. they look southern california mellow, but
i hand it to them, they have a pretty good work
ethic.
I see our generational lives in the context of that
particular generation and it's times.I think sometimes
we get a little too stuck up about our own generation.
maybe you came of age when pottery , potluck and
poetry were cool, part of a larger statement being
made at the time.
it is easy to be part of something when that something
is part of the overall movement of the times. and even
when times aren't easy. my dad was a farm kid in the
depression. he worked his butt off as soon as he
could be put to work...and at a very young age.... all
those kids did... and they carried it forward into
their lives , a good many of them did. that was the
directive of the times he grew in....
i was in jr high when the first earth day happened so
i was one of those ecology teens. there was also a
pretty nasty recession going on when i graduated, and
the revolution started by the first boomers was still
hanging, all tangled up, in midair. Nixon resigned
about when i graduated. friends dads and boyfriends in
the war and coming back.Sexual revolution in full
swing. what a confusing time. my first job was at a
gas station during the arab oil embargo. i was just
one of the generation of young women who went out and
got outdoor jobs (which had been off limits), combine
crew, forest service jobs, etc. Why? because they were
more interesting and paid better than being a
waitress(did that too) working at a nursing home (did
that too)......I could be outside and be physical,
which to me, was GREAT!
I started school in the traditional late
fifties,early sixties when we were young ladies who
would be moms, nurses or teachers, and got popped out
into the outlandish world of hard rock and the sexual
revolution.... without much transitional training
BTW....So, though i Thought it was a personal choice,
wearing jeans and parting hair down the middle
....um, just look at the yearbooks from back there!
It was EASY to get involved with back to the land
projects then...
in the same way it was for my mom to marry early and
start having kids in the fifties....everyone was doing
it, and to a 17, 18, 19 year old....??? why miss out?
not just that you are immersed in the movement of
your generation, when young, you feel the pull of
your 'time' , the quickening of your age group..think
back to your life and see the context of your own
youth, which, in this country for the past several
decades at least , for most of us, involved choices,
yes, but choices in the context of the times.
i do know older generations
wrote off OUR work ethic as well......and i can't
blame them,
but i do know it looks different from inside your own
generation bubble , as opposed to outside....
i am amazed sometimes when i see younger folks
getting into clay, when they have so much else calling
, clamoring for their attention , when the economics
of living today, in the USA , requires so much
more.... money....every month. Clay isn't even on the
radar screen .
you might rue the fact that these guys working in the
pottery do not have the time to explore their work, to
test their glazes, to learn the totality of their
craft in the way that some on this list do...
no they are pretty much throwing themselves into it to
make enough to live on for now, and in order to do
that they have to be good, and fast, and proficient,
most of the time. it will be interesting to see how
many of them stick with it. the wheelthrowers are
saving for a time when they can have their own place
and studio.some of the others saving for a set of
wheels(car or truck, not pottery).
i have no idea what they think of me, i am sure they
think i have been at it for an eternity....maybe their
mom's taught them pottery as kids .
The way they are doing it is very much a part of them
and their generation, and it is fitting .Who is to say
whether it is less or more than anyone else at any
other time?
i do think back to the motley crew of folks in my
first ceramics studio and i wonder how many of them
are still into it.
by the way, i am getting interested in non fired clay,
as in building materials, starting to search things
like adobe, and cob and even earthbag houses.
fascinating..OK< OK TRENDEEE..
but i better start now ,while i still have a work
ethic AND cartilage!
Stephani
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