Iris Artist on fri 16 apr 04
dying?(half OT)
Kelly, I thoroughly enjoyed your post, long as it may be. I think there is something to be said for making your own. My mother is the same way, a seamstress of enormous talent who can make everything from wedding dresses to reupholstering the inside of vehicles, she still tends a garden in the backyard, makes her own tea, uses the same old mop she has had for ages and home-schools my youngest sister(now 13). She gave up a pretty good paying job complete with the usual benefits to stay at home and do her "art" and although she still works hand to mouth, I have never seen her happier. I listen with earnest when she tells me about the things she did when I was a newborn, like washing diapers and hand grinding food instead of buying ready made, and of course nursing, this is something I did keep. In fact, I still do, Laurel just doesn't want to give it up... and she's approaching two...eek! They grow fast. In "nursing" that is breast feeding, I've noticed a peculiar trend, Formula
feeding has become incredibly popular, and I wonder why so many choose to do that instead of breast-feed? I'm not talking about women who can't, but women who won't. I guess I just don't get it. When I am tending the garden I feel closer to whatever is up there, when I am creating a piece for myself I feel happy, instead of going out and buying frames, I make them, I make as much of my work as possible, even went a little extreme at one point and tried to ground my own oils... that was a mess... I would love to learn more about making ones own clay, if anyone has any recipes please email them to me. Thanks again for your thoughtful and inspiring discourse.
~Stäcy--who is cleaning out her studio and email so she can paint tomorrow...
primalmommy wrote:
I am posting to clayart from a different account, because my mail2world account is dating posts 1979 and I bet they are landing at the bottom of people's emails/archives.. somebody tell me if you find one there..
I've thinking these days about the ironies, snobberies, and cultural baggage surrounding
the notions of "decorative" and "functional" -- ideas that carry over to the way we make,
price, use, and value ceramics.
First, a little illustration:
In the days before plastic packaging and disposable everything, my farm grandma's trash
was either compost, table scraps for the beagles... or stuff for the burn barrel.
Every farm around here used to have a (functional) burn barrel. Also a big bonfire, spring and fall, to burn brush and produce ash for the garden.
Not any more. I am all for improving air quality, but it seems ironic that I could be arrested
for burning the dead sticks in my yard. I live in a raggedy little suburban neighborhood
framed in by semi trucks spewing black smog, and in the ever present shadow of Toledo
Edison's tall smokestacks.. the BP refinery.. the sunoco refinery... the Dundee cement
plant.. and y'all have read about the Davis Besse nuclear plant with its swiss-cheese
reactor head...
There IS a point to all this, and here it is: the township recently made an amendment to
the no-burning rule to allow for those "decorative" little chiminea things, the pot-bellied
fireplaces that sit on decks crackling warmly with supermarket "firelogs" for "ambiance" at
social gatherings. So I got me one ;0)
I have discovered that 1) kids love picking up sticks in the yard if they get to put them in a
fire, 2) I can make a four foor flame shoot out of the top of a chiminea, and 3) it really IS
nice to sit on the deck at the chill of early spring dusk with a nice crackling fire to stare at.
Perfectly legal. This is just one more on my list of ironies.
If I had, say, 25 hyperactive, barking, pooping Afghan Hounds in my yard, it would be
legal. My half dozen small, quiet laying hens, however, brought down the wrath of the
township's zoning board, threats of police confiscation, and a long and expensive battle to
challenge the ruling. Why? Because we are zoned residential, and chickens are "farm
animals', (functional) and thus prohibited. Because they are useful, eat bugs, and lay me
an enormous, orange-yolked, organic, grass fed egg every day, they are somehow an
embarrasment to the neighborhood.
I asked the board, "If I were raising, say, anteaters, or peacocks.. that would be legal?"
The guys in suits scratched their heads, concluded, yep, that would be legal.
The list continued. Decorative bird: cockatoo, peacock, etc -- legal. Functional: Chicken, illegal.
Technically, I could have a Vietnamese pot bellied pig, but not a pig intended for the
freezer.
I could have a dog -- even a big sheep dog or a hunting dog or some other no-farm-would-
be-without-one-dog... but nota sheep. A guinea pig, but not a rabbit. Decorative, but not
functional.
The only logic I can find her is that modern society -- (despite the front yard "wishing
wells" and concrete geese on the doorstep) -- is embarrassed by any reminder of our
rural past, or the hands-on work it took to sustain it. The professional, two-income
neighborhood that shares a back property line with my little blue-collar street has
matching mailboxes, decks and split-levels... the rules of the homeowner's association
state, "NO clotheslines... NO fences except split rail.. NO vegetable gardens, only
flowers..." (no functional, only decorative.)
Do you see a pattern? I can only imagine what they think, looking over the fence at my
dandelion-strewn yard, with rain barrels and rows of rusty tomato cages. Diapers flapped
on the clothesline for 8 years while I dug potatoes, baby in a sling, and my barefoot kids
chased chickens.. pit kiln smouldering in the background. It's like a national geographic
special... or the history channel... and no doubt "brings down the property values".
If your functional coffee mug is $12 people will gripe about the price. If it's a sculpture,
though, the higher you price it, the more folks want it. If it's a casserole, it's folky and
homey and nice... (and if it's good pottery besides, it might bring in a pretty good price
among folks who know handmade from walmart.) But it's not (nudge nudge, wink wink)
"art"... won't make the finer galleries.
"Functional" has an identity crisis. The things people used to be proud to know how to do
are becoming a curiosity.. "why in the world would you do THAT?" Hands, clothes,
people that do physical work are unfashionable. (A woman once quit my pottery class
rather than ruin her nails.)
Functional means making your own. Before I tuck in to bed tonight I will set up breakfast--
a crock-pot of rolled oats (by the 50 pound bag), plugged into the christmas light timer to
come on at 6am, with raisins and cinnamon, and apples I dried myself last fall. 5 pints of
yogurt will be ready by morning, and gone by thursday when I make more. For lunch it's
bread I baked, with peanut butter I made myself (10 pound box of peanuts) and jam from
the strawberries we all picked together last june. For supper, meatloaf from the deer my
hubby shot last fall, salad from the hoop house and stewed tomatoes from our own
garden.
I live a block from Walmart and a grocery store. I am not in a remote area, or even in the
country. I am not trying to be quaint, or romantic, or homespun. It's damn hard work
sometimes, but it's rewarding. It is what we can afford, since I chose to tuck my MA in a
file, give up a good job, and stay home to raise/school my little ones. I might have chosen
a life/path with more disposable income -- it's the way I grew up, after all -- but I didn't. I'm
not trying to change the world or make a counterculture statement.. but I am not
embarrassed by my choices, either.
I make both kinds of pots but in general we tend to value "functional" over "decorative"
around here. I don't want a vehicle that can't haul 5 bushels of peaches and a bale of straw
tied on top. I strive to be functional myself. I may not be a supermodel but I am good
breeding stock, and can throw a pot, skin an elk, operate a pressure cooker and a chain
saw, and carry on a conversation with my daughter's bevy of imaginary fairies. All at the
same time ;0) I wouldn't hate being functional AND decorative -- like some of Tony's nice
tableware ;0) -- but beautiful and useless I wouldn't trade for.
I am not out to bash folks who have chosen wealth. If I could, I would travel the world,
collect art, pots, fill my home with handmade dishes, textiles, furniture. Wealth does not make people shallow, or pretentious, or any of that. People are people, rich or poor.
But I find an authenticity in knowing whose hand made my casserole, my kickwheel, my
tofu, my quilt. And it worries me that my culture -- ok, world -- is so led by marketing to
value flash over function, new over old. The tradition Lee speaks of is buried treasure, like
the stories I collected while working as a folklorist: granny's kids, grandkids, great grands
were playing nintendo, watching cartoons, had no interest in the stories, their own roots,
their granny's living history lesson. It was only the middle aged who would come up to me,
tears in their eyes, and say, "I always meant to sit down with my mother/grandma/aunt
and listen, but now it's too late.. "
I wonder some day if we will ever again need to know how to prune a plum tree, can a
tomato, save garden seeds from year to year. Maybe not. But the beauty of knowing how
to make something is that you don't have to worry about that, much..
And there's another value in making by hand. It's that life is about process, not product. The minutes and hours and moments we pass, doing whatever it is we do, ARE life; there is no final exam, no "how did I do". We canbe an active participant in our lives -- creators of things, like David says, holding all the aces and making decisons for ourselves -- or we can spend our lives in jobs/roles we did not choose and do not enjoy so we can pay others to provide our daily needs for us.
When I wonder why folks want to make their own clay (it comes pre-packaged, y'know, and cheap) '.. I think of folks asking me why I would want to make tofu (also available pre-packaged and cheap.) Or teach my own kids or whatever.
but I bet of you looked at potters as a group you'd find a lot of people who do for themselves for the sheer joy, pride and reward of it..
I think that's a good thing.. my new motto: "be functional"..
Yours,
Kelly in Ohio
who completely loves Lili Krakowski and her sympathy for her fellow man, PITA or otherwise... if we admit that deep down we're all just a bunch of little kids playing at grown-up, it's a lot easier to cut each other some slack. if I can get in the right frame of mind (a fleeting but recurrent thing), I can look get flipped off by some tailgating maniac in traffic and think, "too bad he's got so much stress and tension and anger.. lucky me not to have such a frustrating life..."
______________________________________________________________________________
Send postings to clayart@lsv.ceramics.org
You may look at the archives for the list or change your subscription
settings from http://www.ceramics.org/clayart/
Moderator of the list is Mel Jacobson who may be reached at melpots@pclink.com.
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th
| |
|
