Wyndham Dennison on wed 2 jul 08
May,
> I grow weary with self-taught potters and their loosey goosey health and sa=
> fety interpretations. I hear it from my friends too, over in England and he=
> re in the US. This is my personal experience.
On the other side I have seen glaze courses taught by people that have
no clue as the what and why of glazing except that they read from a book
that someone else said "This is the way to do this or that"
Instead, learn the WHY of something, ASK questions and if someone does
not know the answer, question WHY you are learning from them. There are
tons of great books on pottery, clay, glazes, etc but few want to dig
into this valuable resource. Fear of something(LEAD) has caused many to
flee from the knowledge of the problem and advantages. I do not advocate
using lead but the knowledge of how it help create the colors and glazes
is of immense importance and leads to a better understanding of why
glazes work the way they do. This goes for all materials we use. If one
is to work in a medium, it is incumbent on that individual to learn from
all sources, the information to become a competent artist. Simply
following the lead of the respected gurus does not build the personal
knowledge base needed in this or any other field, but may lead to the
"He did it that way" thinking.
As an example, recently on a local news show, the subject of lead was
presented as a "scare news item" The piece in question was imported slip
cast ware an contained lead, But, no where in the news piece did it say
that the piece leached lead, or was tested for the leaching of lead,
just that lead was in the glaze and how bad this evil product was. If
some one were to take issue with this report, they would be chastised
for even coming to the defense of such a terrible product. Such is the
state of news and information in this country today on many different
subjects.
If we ourselves learn to ask the "why" of something and learn from the
answer and not simply taking someone else's word or opinion as fact we
will benefit immensely. There is nothing wrong with being self taught
if you always question the teacher. Wyndham
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