Jessica Morton on mon 26 mar 01
Have been enjoying recent threads re: beliefs and philosophies along
with Bernard's and Celadon's vowels.
Maybe our wet pots are like a young child, still in process and
fresh, open to possibility. I once looked at the shelves filled in
our studio with ware waiting to be bisqued, and thought of all the
hope represented there.
Can we see glaze and form as interdependent and not so isolated from
each other? I was taught that throwing, trimming, and glazing are
each important steps, none of them just housework or drudgery. If we
can't learn to accept and enjoy the whole process, our work may
reflect that. Seems to me the beauty of ceramics is how much it
invokes process over time, and several stages that involve all 4
basic elements.
Two Hamada quotes:
Asked by Leach how he could manage to glaze several hundred pots in a
day, without seeming to need any notes or planning ahead, he said, "I
simply look at the pot and ask what it wants."
"Making pottery should not be like climbing a mountain, it should be
more like walking down a hill in a pleasant breeze."
"It's not that children are little scientists but that
scientists are big children."
---"The Scientist in the Crib" by Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl
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