Jeff Lawrence on sun 4 jan 98
jjcat observed:
>Mankind has lost it's creativity because there are to many of us around, it's
>very difficult to come up with something completely new. Except artists of
>course, they don't copy at all right?
>Open your eyes and look around, you will spend the rest of your life pissed
>off.
>
Jack Troy takes a look in the brighter direction:
>Merely LOOKING at ceramics through glass cases is the next best thing to seeing
>them pictured in books, but HANDLING them is the only way to become more fully
>informed about what they are; after all, that is how they were made.
>It's such a simple and amazing experience: picking up a 10,000 year old Joman
>vessel and sensing whose hands have been where yours are at the moment.
>
Another perspective:
I'd assert that novelty is overrated. When I really learn a skill,
regardless of the source, it becomes mine. I must disagree with jjcat on the
unworthiness of copying. For me, it's more homage than theft, leading to
building on solid tradition rather than twisting in winds of fashion.
To build on Jack Troy observation, I get off on the idea that something I
made will catch somebody's eye and hand in 2500 AD. And when you consider
the centuries of human energy and curiousity that make what we do with clay
possible, it reduces our work to, at best, carrying another few stones to
the next level of the citadel.
On the one hand, is that all there is?
On the other hand, it's pretty grand!
Jeff, philosophizing with Senor Jose Cuervo
Jeff Lawrence
jml@sundagger.com
Sun Dagger Design
Rt 3 Box 220
Espanola, NM 87532
ph 505-753-5913
fax 505-753-8074
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