Elizabeth Priddy on wed 19 jul 06
I think that people, artists in particular, are like
simmering sauces. They intensify and become more
complex with continued heat and time. But you will
not change the nature of the sauce, just the character
of the deeper notes.
I do not believe that you can start life as a bechamel
and end it as a wine reduction. It is just not the
nature of the beast, unless you can count dumping the
sauce altogether and starting over but since you use
the same pan it is still the same sauce...a foolish
tangent and a poor analogy to a serious mental break.
Artists tend to get more and more clear in their
vision over time. And it shows in their work and
their personality. An intractable asshole just gets
moreso over time, they rarely have an epiphany and
become "nice". But sometimes they become aware of
their nature and try to compensate for it for their
friends. That's about all you can expect, I think.
Do you think leopards can really change their spots?
Do you know any leopards that actually did? and did it
stick, because temporary insanity or remorse doesn't
count.
I think people gel at a certain point in their lives,
varying according to what critical factors are the
catalysts for true deep impact on their personalities.
And from there on in, it is a matter of reduction over
time to your true essence.
This relates to clay in as much as the Nevelson story
got me thinking about what is happening to me. My
work is a little all over the map right now, but I
know which worklines are live threads and which are
finishing up. And I see myself becoming even more
just exactly who I am over time. I no longer wear
frilly clothes to be romantic and I no longer explain
my work BEFORE inviting criticism, although I
certainly have a right and a certain obligation to
explain after the fact.
Anyway, I guess what I am asking is this: are you
different in any deep ways now from what you were
decades ago? Or are you just tangier over time?
I am at a weird critical point in my own artistic
development where I am cutting the wheat from the
chaff and I am a little surprised at what I am finding
remaining at the end of the day. I did not know I was
so sentimental and soft, delicate even, in my views of
nature and the very young. I didn't know how rigid
and intractable I am on certain topics. I am aware
that I am complicated, when once I was sure that I was
the simplest most straight up person to walk the
earth.
Maybe this is just something to think about in
private, but I am interested in what you think,
especially those of you in danger of forming a crust
on the bottom of the pan soon. (Imagine a twinkle in
the eye there, not a sudden turn towards meanness)
The younglings might not have gelled yet, but they may
have certain insight into those they know who have, so
I am interested in what anyone thinks on this.
E.
Elizabeth Priddy
Beaufort, NC - USA
http://www.elizabethpriddy.com
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Elizabeth Priddy on thu 20 jul 06
Kelly mentioned the difference between men and women
with regard to changing over time.
I think we all come into the world with a blank slate
and some genes and beyond that, what happens makes you
what you are. And that it takes a while and then you
set, like a pudding, and then after that, you can get
a skin, melt, freeze, crack or get eaten up, but you
are still a pudding, not a roast.
The analogy breaks down, as do we all, but here's my
point.
Men are taught that when they "become men" they must
then live their lives and remain men, hopefully
becoming "their own man" at some point and then living
it out "on their own terms".
Women are taught that life is a ceaseless array of
changes and passages. First you are a girl, then
menses hits and "old enough to bleed, old enough to
breed" becomes a factor and you are in limbo until you
do or don't, and then you marry at which point
tradition demands that you even change your name, your
personal identity (isn't stealing someone's name
illegal now?), and with any luck in this order, you
have kids and you change from the bride to the mom,
and then they leave and you again face the bleeding
causing another serious life shift to old woman, maybe
with and maybe without the husband whose name you
took. And then you are left alone again in the end,
with a name you didn't have a lot of control over, a
body that has been at least five different stages of
development and structure.
All in all, the idea of staying the same and becoming
more and more reduced to the essentials is a masculine
model for life, and constantly changing to face the
tide is a feminine model.
Neither is better, but I always prefered the masculine
model. The constantly changing body and body
identification as self is a part of womanhood that
escaped me until 36 years in. I had done the
girl/adolescent/teenage nymph, bride, wife, but
through it all I had remained pretty much the same.
Then I grew another human being in my belly and it all
changed. It changed my personal identity, my sense of
singularity of myself (hard to describe, but when
there is someone attached to you and who kicks you
from the inside, it messes with your personal
boundaries of where you start and they end-it is a
remarkable and beautiful thing, but really weird.)
I designed a mermaid tile while waiting to give birth
and it showed a mermaid hiding among the kelp waiting
for her own little baby, really big with belly, and
the caption read: "Marie knew that he would soon have
to go, but she would desperately miss her constant
companion, and the sea would again be vast and cold."
She had black and white stripes on her tail to help
hide her amonst the kelp in her helpless condition.
It summed up the experience for me. I had never felt
really lonely in my life til after the pregnancy was
over. And I knew it would be that way before it
happened.
And so even with seriously drastic changes in my
perception of reality and right and wrong and
everything over time, I still feel the same as I did
when I was about 12, only much more complicated. Or
at least I did until I gave birth. So now the
masculine model doesn't fit so well, and neither do my
jeans. What I wonder is if parenthood changes men in
a more shocking way than it does women, because it
just might be the first real change to hit a man since
his voice changed permanently. I will ask Jeff, but I
would like to know what any of you think as well.
Tony says his perspective has made him a bit weary of
the uninitiated and I really get that. And Kelly
seems to really hate the idea of being pinned down and
categorized, a sense of freedom seems more important
than consistency over time. But I rather like the
idea that in a sea of change, at least I remain
constant in some sense of "I".
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little
minds." is a well worn quote that I try to balance
with the notion that freedom and responsibility always
walk hand in hand.
One of my crit friends said she did not understand how
the same person can make those stubby blue pots and
those lyrical tiles. I think I identify with both
because some days stubby is just the word I am
searching for. They are not heavy, by the way, they
are light as feathers in weight. I just wanted them
to act as anchors for their jewel encrusted outlandish
lids. I'll work that out so that it is not confusing
to look at and then they will make sense, kind of lack
a black crooked and crusty looking edge on a smooth as
glass brush painting. That didn't happen overnight
either, so I am going to trust the process and keep at
it.
And maybe that should be my approach to "change" as
well. Maybe defining it doesn't matter as much as
accepting it.
I am sure I have contradicted myself many times within
this same post, and so I will stop because philosophy
is like that and I will not solve my metaphysical
quandries tonight. Of that one thing, I am certain.
(Philosophers will be laughing their asses off at
that, but it's not worth explaining, if you know what
I mean.)
E.
Elizabeth Priddy
Beaufort, NC - USA
http://www.elizabethpriddy.com
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Brian O'Neill on thu 20 jul 06
...then it sure cures freezer burn.
Elizabeth,
I enjoyed your "saucy" analogy quite a bit. Right in character ;-)
Since you have been so forthcoming in sharing your personal and
artistic evolution, here's the food analogy that represents my re-entry
into full time clay life.
I began my relationship with clay in the 70's. I did make a living with
it for a time, and have kept a hand in it since then. My primary career
path has been graphic communications for the last 30+ years.
Having rekindled (and now stoking furiously) my love of ceramics at the
ripe old age of 54, I think I'm more like the wonderful sauce that got
thrown in the freezer a couple of years back, and has now emerged with
some serious freezer burn!
My fear was that after the thaw, the juices would be somehow less
tasty. But the heats on, and after a stir or two, the first sips
indicate that nothing was lost, and if I do say so myself, some depth
has taken place. Now that clay is a full time thing, I'll have to keep
stirring to avoid said crustiness. Although there's an old Persian rice
dish called Tadiq (sp) that involves saffron and slightly burning the
bottom rice, which is uncommonly good.
Which brings me to an observation about progress. Having pursued "clay
awareness" in intense, but sporadic periods of time, I've noticed that
coming back to the clay after a long break has allowed me to move past
the prior limits of my abilities, and jump to a higher plateau of
skill. Call it quantum physics, hyperspace, string theory, time space
relationship, I don't know. But whatever fears or blocks that I let
"stiffen" my work, were blown over as I sped past with new excitement
down the path of discovery. I leave the food analogy to better cooks.
Maybe absence does make the heart grow fonder.
Nuff talk. Gotta go make stuff.
Bon appetite,
Brian
Brian Thomas O'Neill
Functional | Sculptural Ceramic Vessels
2985 Goshen Rd | Bellingham, WA | 98226
360 592 3164
brianoneill@cablespeed.com
On Jul 19, 2006, at 8:59 PM, Elizabeth Priddy wrote:
> Maybe this is just something to think about in
> private, but I am interested in what you think,
> especially those of you in danger of forming a crust
> on the bottom of the pan soon.
primalmommy on thu 20 jul 06
I think we are born with our spirits whole and intact, and we are who we
are. Then we set about learning how to get a fist in our mouths, stand,
walk, talk, dance, sing, use a potty, drive a car and fire a kiln.
I think good art comes from whatever core part of that inner spirit we
can still tap, once we have cluttered our minds with all those
complications of living this life, on this world, with these people.
Once society has been clamped onto our growing selves, like those
plastic molds people put over young squash or gourds so they will grow
to a shape like Richard Nixon's head.
Children are lucky who have always had art at their fingertips, the
direct connection to their inner selves, to express who they are and
what they know to be lovely or meaningful. They can find the path to
their inner, creative vision best if they visit frequently. They don't
have to hack their own path to art with a machete later in life, when
the way is lost and overgrown, tangled with the world's report cards and
gold stars and labels, thickets of "you're good at this but not at that"
and "you really don't feel that way", twining vines of identity and
expectations, imposed standards and aesthetics, cautions and rules.
The soul of us at first is pure and noble and not yet cynical or beaten
down. Childhood moves us through toddler selfishness, learning to share,
appropriateness, rules for playing nice with others.
Too soon we find we are supposed to declare who we are, like it's a
static thing. Grownups ask toddlers what they will be when they grow up,
as if it should be decided already, and there is only one choice per
lifetime. We get pigeonholed by folks who want a shorthand to knowing
us. "Ah, a redhead! Oh, a Scorpio! Well, he's Italian, you know.."
Parents are so eager to see how we "turned out" that they push us
forward at a pace we might not have chosen, hand us our script to
appease their own worries.
So it's easy to forget the best part of who you were, the things you
loved and wanted when you were small, the self you were meant to be. The
farther we move from our destinies, the unhappier we are. And we sit
down at a blank canvas, and draw a blank. That inner core we were born
with is like the deep, unpolluted wellspring that can be tapped, if it
can find a way to the surface. We lose the habit of taping that well.
But are we always who we used to be, destiny carved in our DNA? I don't
think so. I think we forget we are the authors of our own lives, that
every day is a start over, with any notion of a past we drag along being
mostly illusion. We can fall into a passive role, watch our lives like a
tv show. We can lose our sense of inquiry and adventure, dig in our
heels and say "I yam what I yam" and fossilize. But it's a choice.
I read somewhere that every 10 years we become a whole new person --
physically, body cells have been replaced, and temporally, we are more
like our current selves than who we were a decade ago. It occurs to me
that, though my grown brother was my best friend and daily companion for
the first dozen years of my life, the sense that we really know each
other after 10 years of not getting together much is mostly nostalgia,
and based on comfortable old assumptions.
I am not sure I believe such things roll by the calendar alone, though.
Experience creates change. The Ohio college girl who left for Paris
never came back, really. Someone different came back. How ya gonna keep
them down on the farm...?
And experience is the fuel for our art, provides the content, the lens
we perceive through, the particular axe we have to grind. And experience
remolds us, over and over in a lifetime.
All it took was marriage to make a chasm between myself and single
friends. All it took was babies to change the perspective of
former-Kelly, who loathed long term commitments, a risk-loving
adventuress whose philosophy was "Me, More, NOW". People who knew me,
younger, would roll on the floor laughing about the contrast between
partying, irreverent rebel without a clue, and my current incarnation as
the aproned homeschooling mommy housewife.
The old high school buddies of my sensible, good natured, predictable
Ward-Cleaver-biology-geek of a husband have reencountered him thirty
years later, and are stunned. They describe a juvenile delinquent I can
barely imagine, living wild and flunking out of school, the guy they'd
bet wouldn't live to be 20.
We evolve, as people and as artists. We can learn to work bipedal
locomotion, and a paint brush, a movie camera, a loom. A pen. Me, I
recorded my life daily, writing down every stupid thing I ever did or
thought, from grade school til marriage. The series of spiral notebooks
is now stacked in attic boxes. No buffering kindness of memory to edit,
soften or revise the past. It's humbling to look back. Scary, too, some
of the risks I took. But I think if you can't look back and find a lot
of cases of, "I used to be a jerk, but I got better", then it's not a
good sign about moving forward.
I think people age well and artists don't get trapped repeating
successes if they keep an open lane of inquiry, and consider themselves
always, always wet clay, a work in progress. Elizabeth's sauce metaphor,
in my mind, is more like the eternal never-washed iron pot hanging over
the medieval hearth, with reheated yesterday's fare and the day before,
remnants or previous meals, pease porrige in the pot, nine days old.
Only this week we have potatoes, and next month we'll have mutton, and
eventually it is more new than old.. though a remnant always lingers.
I see a lot more women than men who grow old without fossilizing, but we
have always lived longer and have had more practice,
evolutionarily-speaking. Whether or not we go looking for changes, they
are coming. Whole worlds of shared perspectives open upto us as we age,
and we are grateful to find those who have left a trail of bread crumbs,
or are in the same situation, looking to confide, support, and comfort.
Suddenly I am aware of conversations about puberty and the pre-teen
years, and simultaneously, about hot flashes and hormones. Gatherings of
peers spend more and more time on the "organ recital" -- my lungs this,
my heart that, my kidneys yadda yadda.. my joints, my elbow, wrist,
knee. One day we will talk aboutlosingparents, and then spouses. Life
keeps throwing you curves, paradigm shifts, changing who you are.
I dream sometimes that I am in a river, floating, and it flows through
strage new landscapes -- some serene, some turbulent and scary.
Sometimes a creek, sometimes a torrent. I have had this dream for years.
the one thing that I have come to recognize is that the river will hold
me up as long as I allow myself to flow with it. Trying to paddle ahead
faster is futile, like running in place. And if I try to stop, to stay
in one place and not move with the river, or to go back, I am sucked
under, flailing, and wake tangled in my pillows or on the brink of an
asthma attack.
Life telling me: Flow. Go.
I know I flinch whenever I catch myself saying, "Well, it's too late for
me"... or, "I'm too old to jump from that height"... or, "I think the
kids today are going to hell in a handbasket."
It feels like fossilizing, to me. Plus, if I get too smug about kids
these days I hear a box of journals in the attic saying, "ahem...."
Yours
Kelly in Ohio... wondering who I will be after I follow the white rabbit
into the rabbit hole this fall...
_______________________________________________________________
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Victoria E. Hamilton on fri 21 jul 06
Kelly, Elizabeth and All -
There's a movie I recommend - "Peaceful Warrior." My husband and I just saw
it this evening. It's in limited release - no huge studio behind it. Word
of mouth is how it's going to make it. Nick Nolte is the only "name" in it,
but the entire cast is wonderful.
You know how when you see a movie with someone else and then there seems to
be a lot going on in your head to talk about and you jabba jabba all the way
home? Well, this movie is not like that - I felt quite still. It is quite
remarkable.
Vicki Hamilton
Millennia Antica Pottery
Seattle, WA - hot, hot, hot here! My chilipepper plants even have
chilipeppers on them already.
-----Original Message-----
From: Clayart [mailto:CLAYART@LSV.CERAMICS.ORG] On Behalf Of primalmommy
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2006 14:19
To: CLAYART@LSV.CERAMICS.ORG
Subject: Re: Is life a crucible...
I think we are born with our spirits whole and intact, and we are who we
are. Then we set about learning how to get a fist in our mouths, stand,
walk, talk, dance, sing, use a potty, drive a car and fire a kiln.
I think good art comes from whatever core part of that inner spirit we
can still tap, once we have cluttered our minds with all those
complications of living this life, on this world, with these people.
Once society has been clamped onto our growing selves, like those
plastic molds people put over young squash or gourds so they will grow
to a shape like Richard Nixon's head.
Children are lucky who have always had art at their fingertips, the
direct connection to their inner selves, to express who they are and
what they know to be lovely or meaningful. They can find the path to
their inner, creative vision best if they visit frequently. They don't
have to hack their own path to art with a machete later in life, when
the way is lost and overgrown, tangled with the world's report cards and
gold stars and labels, thickets of "you're good at this but not at that"
and "you really don't feel that way", twining vines of identity and
expectations, imposed standards and aesthetics, cautions and rules.
The soul of us at first is pure and noble and not yet cynical or beaten
down. Childhood moves us through toddler selfishness, learning to share,
appropriateness, rules for playing nice with others.
Too soon we find we are supposed to declare who we are, like it's a
static thing. Grownups ask toddlers what they will be when they grow up,
as if it should be decided already, and there is only one choice per
lifetime. We get pigeonholed by folks who want a shorthand to knowing
us. "Ah, a redhead! Oh, a Scorpio! Well, he's Italian, you know.."
Parents are so eager to see how we "turned out" that they push us
forward at a pace we might not have chosen, hand us our script to
appease their own worries.
So it's easy to forget the best part of who you were, the things you
loved and wanted when you were small, the self you were meant to be. The
farther we move from our destinies, the unhappier we are. And we sit
down at a blank canvas, and draw a blank. That inner core we were born
with is like the deep, unpolluted wellspring that can be tapped, if it
can find a way to the surface. We lose the habit of taping that well.
But are we always who we used to be, destiny carved in our DNA? I don't
think so. I think we forget we are the authors of our own lives, that
every day is a start over, with any notion of a past we drag along being
mostly illusion. We can fall into a passive role, watch our lives like a
tv show. We can lose our sense of inquiry and adventure, dig in our
heels and say "I yam what I yam" and fossilize. But it's a choice.
I read somewhere that every 10 years we become a whole new person --
physically, body cells have been replaced, and temporally, we are more
like our current selves than who we were a decade ago. It occurs to me
that, though my grown brother was my best friend and daily companion for
the first dozen years of my life, the sense that we really know each
other after 10 years of not getting together much is mostly nostalgia,
and based on comfortable old assumptions.
I am not sure I believe such things roll by the calendar alone, though.
Experience creates change. The Ohio college girl who left for Paris
never came back, really. Someone different came back. How ya gonna keep
them down on the farm...?
And experience is the fuel for our art, provides the content, the lens
we perceive through, the particular axe we have to grind. And experience
remolds us, over and over in a lifetime.
All it took was marriage to make a chasm between myself and single
friends. All it took was babies to change the perspective of
former-Kelly, who loathed long term commitments, a risk-loving
adventuress whose philosophy was "Me, More, NOW". People who knew me,
younger, would roll on the floor laughing about the contrast between
partying, irreverent rebel without a clue, and my current incarnation as
the aproned homeschooling mommy housewife.
The old high school buddies of my sensible, good natured, predictable
Ward-Cleaver-biology-geek of a husband have reencountered him thirty
years later, and are stunned. They describe a juvenile delinquent I can
barely imagine, living wild and flunking out of school, the guy they'd
bet wouldn't live to be 20.
We evolve, as people and as artists. We can learn to work bipedal
locomotion, and a paint brush, a movie camera, a loom. A pen. Me, I
recorded my life daily, writing down every stupid thing I ever did or
thought, from grade school til marriage. The series of spiral notebooks
is now stacked in attic boxes. No buffering kindness of memory to edit,
soften or revise the past. It's humbling to look back. Scary, too, some
of the risks I took. But I think if you can't look back and find a lot
of cases of, "I used to be a jerk, but I got better", then it's not a
good sign about moving forward.
I think people age well and artists don't get trapped repeating
successes if they keep an open lane of inquiry, and consider themselves
always, always wet clay, a work in progress. Elizabeth's sauce metaphor,
in my mind, is more like the eternal never-washed iron pot hanging over
the medieval hearth, with reheated yesterday's fare and the day before,
remnants or previous meals, pease porrige in the pot, nine days old.
Only this week we have potatoes, and next month we'll have mutton, and
eventually it is more new than old.. though a remnant always lingers.
I see a lot more women than men who grow old without fossilizing, but we
have always lived longer and have had more practice,
evolutionarily-speaking. Whether or not we go looking for changes, they
are coming. Whole worlds of shared perspectives open upto us as we age,
and we are grateful to find those who have left a trail of bread crumbs,
or are in the same situation, looking to confide, support, and comfort.
Suddenly I am aware of conversations about puberty and the pre-teen
years, and simultaneously, about hot flashes and hormones. Gatherings of
peers spend more and more time on the "organ recital" -- my lungs this,
my heart that, my kidneys yadda yadda.. my joints, my elbow, wrist,
knee. One day we will talk aboutlosingparents, and then spouses. Life
keeps throwing you curves, paradigm shifts, changing who you are.
I dream sometimes that I am in a river, floating, and it flows through
strage new landscapes -- some serene, some turbulent and scary.
Sometimes a creek, sometimes a torrent. I have had this dream for years.
the one thing that I have come to recognize is that the river will hold
me up as long as I allow myself to flow with it. Trying to paddle ahead
faster is futile, like running in place. And if I try to stop, to stay
in one place and not move with the river, or to go back, I am sucked
under, flailing, and wake tangled in my pillows or on the brink of an
asthma attack.
Life telling me: Flow. Go.
I know I flinch whenever I catch myself saying, "Well, it's too late for
me"... or, "I'm too old to jump from that height"... or, "I think the
kids today are going to hell in a handbasket."
It feels like fossilizing, to me. Plus, if I get too smug about kids
these days I hear a box of journals in the attic saying, "ahem...."
Yours
Kelly in Ohio... wondering who I will be after I follow the white rabbit
into the rabbit hole this fall...
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David Beumee on fri 21 jul 06
Hi Elizabeth,
It certainly is my experience that I stand in the fire, as a potter of thirty years, and I'm learning that an attitute of "giving it up to the fire" is a difficult and extremely revealing approach to finding out where you're at as a potter and an artist. I learned to make pots in an art school setting, and beside having been given the opportunity to learn good basic throwing skills, decorative expressiveness was an expectation. It has lead me on a long journey that is just now beginning to come full circle, and I'm looking forward with tremendous anticipation to the results of the latest clay body and slip tests. I'm in the midst of putting out chapter one of a book on poetry and porcelain for comment, if anyone is interested.
David Beumee
Porcelain by David Beumee
Lafayette Colorado
www.davidbeumee.com
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Elizabeth Priddy
> I think that people, artists in particular, are like
> simmering sauces. They intensify and become more
> complex with continued heat and time. But you will
> not change the nature of the sauce, just the character
> of the deeper notes.
>
> I do not believe that you can start life as a bechamel
> and end it as a wine reduction. It is just not the
> nature of the beast, unless you can count dumping the
> sauce altogether and starting over but since you use
> the same pan it is still the same sauce...a foolish
> tangent and a poor analogy to a serious mental break.
>
> Artists tend to get more and more clear in their
> vision over time. And it shows in their work and
> their personality. An intractable asshole just gets
> moreso over time, they rarely have an epiphany and
> become "nice". But sometimes they become aware of
> their nature and try to compensate for it for their
> friends. That's about all you can expect, I think.
>
> Do you think leopards can really change their spots?
> Do you know any leopards that actually did? and did it
> stick, because temporary insanity or remorse doesn't
> count.
>
> I think people gel at a certain point in their lives,
> varying according to what critical factors are the
> catalysts for true deep impact on their personalities.
> And from there on in, it is a matter of reduction over
> time to your true essence.
>
> This relates to clay in as much as the Nevelson story
> got me thinking about what is happening to me. My
> work is a little all over the map right now, but I
> know which worklines are live threads and which are
> finishing up. And I see myself becoming even more
> just exactly who I am over time. I no longer wear
> frilly clothes to be romantic and I no longer explain
> my work BEFORE inviting criticism, although I
> certainly have a right and a certain obligation to
> explain after the fact.
>
> Anyway, I guess what I am asking is this: are you
> different in any deep ways now from what you were
> decades ago? Or are you just tangier over time?
>
> I am at a weird critical point in my own artistic
> development where I am cutting the wheat from the
> chaff and I am a little surprised at what I am finding
> remaining at the end of the day. I did not know I was
> so sentimental and soft, delicate even, in my views of
> nature and the very young. I didn't know how rigid
> and intractable I am on certain topics. I am aware
> that I am complicated, when once I was sure that I was
> the simplest most straight up person to walk the
> earth.
>
> Maybe this is just something to think about in
> private, but I am interested in what you think,
> especially those of you in danger of forming a crust
> on the bottom of the pan soon. (Imagine a twinkle in
> the eye there, not a sudden turn towards meanness)
> The younglings might not have gelled yet, but they may
> have certain insight into those they know who have, so
> I am interested in what anyone thinks on this.
>
> E.
>
> Elizabeth Priddy
>
> Beaufort, NC - USA
> http://www.elizabethpriddy.com
>
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Elizabeth Priddy on fri 21 jul 06
I would most certainly like to see your chapter,
although I have little experience with poetry, I did
have an affair with porcelain for about half a decade
before I threw that moody cur back to the curb in
favor of more stable companions. Just mail me one and
I'll send you comments off list.
I still get the urge to paint on it, but I found a
better surface for me.
I did a retrospective show a few years back and showed
work from two decades all in the same space. I had
kept what I considered my best pieces from each phase
of my life and seeing them in one room was really
weird and seemed awfully raw and emotional. I can see
my current work dispassionately, but each of those
pieces took me straight to a place I had long released
from my radar.
E.
E.
Elizabeth Priddy
Beaufort, NC - USA
http://www.elizabethpriddy.com
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Lee Love on sat 22 jul 06
We aren't born complete. We are dealt certain cards, into an
environment we have no control over. So, we have to learn how to
play the cards according to the situation we face.
You don't necessarily start simple and get more complex. In
many ways, we move toward simplicity, if we don't fight nature.
Aging is all about simplifying your life, to meet the constrains
placed upon us by aging. Herman Hesse's Magister Ludi or The Glass
Bead Game, talks about this.
--
Lee in Mashiko, Japan
http://mashiko.org
My google Notebooks:
http://tinyurl.com/e5p3n
"The accessibility of the handmade object in today's world seems vital
and radical, and hopefully tempers our hunger for 'progress' and
rationality" - , Michael Kline
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