Rare Earth

This is a series of writings about pots, ceramics and my worldview as a potter. They are the thoughts that seem significant enough to record and share, or at least those that hang around long enough make it to screen or paper. Some are long-held opinions, others are snapshots of ideas captured at a given moment. Each is open to change; I indicate revision dates where appropriate. As should be obvious, these are just my ideas. There are many other valid, contrasting views and it would be foolish to take mine as the last word on anything.

Why do this? Writing about the process and philosophy of being a potter often helps me sort out my thoughts; it clarifies what I'm doing and why. I think it's easy for potters to fall into the trap of too much work with too little reflection about it. To paraphrase the designer Hillman Curtis, thinking and writing about what I do helps "make the invisible visible." I hope it does the same for you, whatever your materials, process or expertise.

last updated: 11.09.05

Articles

Safety Second

Back when I was young and dumber (OK, it was 2001), I wrote a bit called Safety First that described how careless I was about studio safety, protecting my health, and being a reasonably cautious potter. It was a punk rock-style rebellious stance against what I'd been told I was "supposed" to do. It was also completely misguided. And supposed to be at least somewhat humourous. And, in my defense, that's the year I turned 30, so if you're feeling generous we can call it a last gasp at fading youth.

Someone pointed out that it was reckless of me to say such things publicly; particularly as a sometime teacher and since I presume the role of authority elsewhere on my site. Despite my disclaimers to the contrary (that "I'd never advocate this approach to anyone" and "I make my students do as I say when it comes to safety and proper procedure, not as I do."), I think there's some truth to this. Students and other novices might take my casual rebellion as good practice. I can't expect to have it both ways; people will see through that veneer every time. And even before this, I'd started to feel hypocritcal about the fact that what I advocated to others ("wear a mask", "don't eat that") and what I actually practiced were so wildly out of synch.

So in an attempt to redeem myself, I thought an update was in order. A telling of truths, a clearing of rubble, a cleansing of conscience! You see, sometime in the last four years, I've changed. I started sweeping the floor of the studio. I got over my issues about dust masks and rubber gloves, and now use both quite frequently. I stretch my abused back every morning. I stay far away from Manganese.

I try to take breaks, I try (but usually fail) to do a bit of meditation - or at least some inactive pondering before launching into the next task. I started keeping dark glasses nearby when firing kilns. I honestly intend to buy a back support, and some day I'll take the time to put it on before hauling around heavy stuff. I suck in kiln fumes less deeply. Alas, I still lick the clay. Can't help it.

But progress is progress. Time will tell where I go from here. How much safer might I get?

Along the way, though, it's occured to me that we all have our things: the vices we choose, the rules we break. It's hard to be good all the time. Not many can live up to the standards of Lake Wobegone. What's good for one person isn't good enough for another, and we're all going to die of something someday. I know a guy who talks about cutting asbestos with a circular saw back in the days before this was obviously a bad idea, and I think, "Well - could be worse." (Oh, and I still think those Monona Rossol columns in Clay Times are a bit over the top. Panic! Tragedy! Making pots will kill you! I say change the tone a bit, and people will be more likely to listen.)

So, I'll leave my old post intact for archival purposes. If we can't learn from our own dumb mistakes, then what's the point of making them in the first place?

[11.10.05]

Titles

rare earth?

[6.10.05]

Clay Evolution

work in progress

Every lump of clay feels like pure possibility, even within the well-defined limits of wheel-thrown utilitarian pottery. If it took our distant ancestors 10,000 years to modify one form of stone ax into another, then they lacked either a desire or ability to envision change/improvement/adaptation. But we've become almost perfect at it: Innovation and invention as a life goal, married to the processes of creation, happening in places like my basement in small town America.

Most potters of even 100 years ago were far more like those ancestors - creating the same reliable forms over and over again with little thought of the alternatives - than like us, with our endless blue-sky experimentation. Modern ceramics is so varied and dynamic because nearly every educated practitioner of it (and for the first time in history, we're the majority) has internalized High Art concepts of originality and uniqueness. We're all moving towards the edges of the known, and away from one another, as efficiently as possible, like the molecules of a heated gas in an enclosed space (e.g. a kiln).

I'm excited to sit at the wheel and find out what happens next, but not to dwell on what I've made in the past or even to complete things started the day before. I'm mentally dressed in my best Lewis and Clark expeditionary gear, ready to further explore the boundary where my intentions and the clay intersect, and to jump clear across it if the opportunity happens to present itself. Sometimes I wind up in mighty strange country; sometimes I get lost. Often, I return to the known with souvenirs from beyond my own frontier, small tokens that hint at a greater reality yet to be fully discovered. And it's interesting that this quest is generally such a private one, that an observer peering in through the window would see nothing but some wet clay and the spinning wheel.

"It's the question that drives us."

[12.6.03]

The Future of Pots

21st Century Ceramics show

It was an honor to have my work included in the show, and an amazing event to see in person. So many good pots, such a great variety of potters and ways to handle clay. The presentation was excellent as well; I've never seen so many contemporary ceramic items in one museum-quality exihibition. (Several "old timers" said not to expect it again soon, either.) If the present is any indication, the future looks like it is in pretty good shape.

[8.26.03] [rev 6.13.05]

How much diversity is the right amount?

my studio

Saturdays, my best studio day, are generally built around this dilemma: how much stuff should I get going at once? should I let those cups dry enough to add handles? how many things can I realistically accomplish before lunch?

Then there's the external stuff to balance in somehow. the dayjob, of course. time with family, friends, exercise, general upkeep. but the hardest is the other creative things, the competing interests. Should I stop in the studio a couple hours early on sunday afternoon to go record music? How much time drawing and writing about pots, instead of making them, is too much time? (the same could be said for thinking about pots, and for thinking about thinking about pots, etc.) The dilemma is that I want as much time in the clay studio as humanly possible. But I also want to go on exploration walks, make videos, organize my mp3 collection, brew up a batch of mail art for upcoming birthdays, paint, build, work on the house. A puzzle. I'm infinitely grateful for the times when all of these things sound like uncovered jewels, waiting to be scooped off the ground; the times when if only my energy could hold out as long as my enthusiasm, all would be well. Far, far better than those times when the Black Dog stalks, the grimness sets in, and nothing sounds interesting, nothing has its own intrinsic reward.

So, to sum in an oversimplified and overly optimistic way: I'll take the dilemma, the not-knowing, the second guessing. My belief is that all of these things, any activity that spurs ideas and uncovers surprises and builds the person doing it, is worth doing. Writing a letter home, some days, is just as negentropic as throwing teapots.

[3.20.03]

Are bad pots worse than no pots at all?

a batch of new pots

Shouldn't the term "handmade" imply that some individual care and attention went into the object as well? Are craft items that were created mindlessly of any greater inherent value than, say, a well-conceived but mass-produced item? There are plenty of skilled product designers out there, and in many cases I'd be happier to own the millionth example of their successful, talented attention than the careless results of a "production" craftsperson.

The commonly heard sentiment of, "If I do x, then at least it will sell" makes my skin crawl. If you need the money that badly, I say go into a field that is more lucrative, rather than watering down this one. Much of the value of crafts and art lies in our fundamental assumptions about its creation. Each time we send a mass of pots-as-consumer-goods into the world, the value of the entire category is diluted for everyone. Our cultural notion of craft/art can be thought of as a public commons, an environment that is owned by all but can be exploited by any. Therefore, if faced with bad handmade pots vs. no handmade pots I think I'd have to vote for the latter. There's already enough junk, enough kitsch, enough knickknacks out there to occupy more than our share of landfills. As creators of objects, I think we are obligated to maintain a high standard to the objects we make. Unfortunately, too often it appears that craftspeople fall into the same trap as corporations: all means justify the end of a profitable bottom line. How many disassociated actions from consequences in the name of "shareholder value" can one society endure? Shouldn't the craft markets, with their opportunities to be personal, small, and unique, hold themselves to something more than this? Profit at any expense often means profit at every expense.

For myself, I have chosen to stay away from a career as a full-time potter until I can make it financially viable without compromising too much of what the work I create means to me. I say this with the understanding that these are fantastically relative terms, and that each individual has their own unique situation. But I'm talking about keeping my initial vision of what being a potter meant, romanticism and all, intact. Even on a case by case basis, I fear that too many potters gave this up long ago as either unrealistic or overly ambitious. Perhaps my perspective suffers from the luxury of being otherwise gainfully employed, but I'm disturbed by the idea of potters who would do or make anything to continue supporting themselves from their craft. This is, in some sense, a restatement of the purpose of Leach's Potter's Book -- particularly his chapter on "Towards a Standard". All the same issues apply.

The lure of all the easy ways to make a buck at the expense of quality is too strong. As with all consumer markets, public opinion defaults to the lowest common denominator. People generally like that which is familiar, non-threatening, comfortable; this is all fine and good, except that it creates demand for craft that is bland, cliche, shallow, simplistic. I don't know anyone who decided to be a potter with those attributes on their list of reasons for doing so. These are not lofty goals. If one really wants to pander to the middle, in routine tasks that require little personal devotion and less actual creativity, aren't there better jobs out there than this? Those who make the work should know better than those who buy it. We have an obligation - and more often than not, an opportunity - to educate our customers.

But I know how it is: The blue glaze bucket calls out to you softly, in the middle of the night. "If I can make 100 cups at $15 per cup, that really starts to add up". The middle class life of your non-artist peers beckons with it's cars that aren't rusty and DVD players and trips to the coast. The requests from well-meaning but misguided customers get harder and harder to turn down. Maybe you'll give in just this once...

So it almost goes without saying that the potters I admire the most are those who have kept a solid grasp on their own standards, the fundamental qualities of their pots that are non-negotiable. Many, of course, have other sources of income like teaching or graphic design or whatever. A rare few have taken the quality of their work and the integrity of their process as a primary assumption, and molded the rest of their lives around that. These are the people that I aspire to emulate, because they have shown the greatest conviction; not only are they potters, they are good ones. Not only do they make a living year by year, they do it without sacrificing the things they loved about making pots in the first place. I'm unsure as to whether I can do the same -- it takes large amounts of determination and effort to put those standards ahead of so many other potential priorities in life, possibly more than I myself possess. Perhaps this is what makes those potters, and their pots, so great, and makes me so intolerant of the alternatives.

[9.25.02]

Why I don't use bright glazes (very often)

copper red glaze

I suppose it comes down to a feeling that those bright, primary colors just don't fit the style of my pots very well, multiplied by the unfortunate fact that a lot of mediocre potters use glazes of a certain type (i.e. the super shiny, color-saturated ones that knock you over from 50 yds. away) to cover up poor quality in other areas like form, weight, function. Sad but true. There, that's the cruelest thing I'm going to write today. Had to get it out there right up front.

And it's interesting to speculate on why that is, why the glaze is the most common crutch of the inexperienced and the hucksters. I believe there are two factors at play here, 1) it's very difficult to steal another person's form, but stealing a glaze can be pretty easy, and 2) the general public responds much more easily (and quickly, in the context of a sales transaction) to color than to form.

Some exposition:
1) Glazes are just out there, packed into books, staring up at us from workshop handouts, practically falling out of the sky via the web. What used to be a secret alchemy is now general knowledge. I could teach a reasonably intelligent monkey to mix a glaze; following a recipe is the simple part. Glaze application can be pretty straightforward too. Take a load of student pots and apply an instructor's glazes to them and - to the average viewer - there will be little discernable difference between the experienced potter's work and the novice's. Observant, educated viewers know better, but the folks glazing everything Market Blue rarely care about those viewers anyways.

2) So as to not sound quite as condescending as I am wont to, we're all novices in far more areas than we are experts. That's the nature of expertise, making something your thing. The more you pay attention to it, the finer the grain of detail you're aware of, the stronger your convictions about it. Even more so for art and craft, where this observational learning happens in the context of "hands-on" creation. Just as I would freely admit to knowing a pitifully small amount about baroque sculpture, midwestern gardening, or cricket, the average person hauled in off the street has very little knowledge of pots. Tastes are unrefined, often leading to an acceptance of (and desire for) the lowest common denominator. (There's a point coming here, I can feel it...)

So, in a culture practically centered around not only mass media, with it's mob of competing images, but around it's VIRTUAL media, color dominates. Silhouette would place second, even when considering 3D objects like pots, with aspects like the totality of form and function coming in much farther down the list. Thus, the splashy copper red/cobalt blue draws immediate attention, while a more subtle surface - even on a better pot - is frequently overlooked. And this is why I love the subtleties of wood, soda, reduction firing: pots that are about form and surface equally, exploring the most potent aspects of pottery as a medium. Pots that don't scream for attention like a toddler, but rather wait to receive their due, like a patient old man.

3) And this isn't just grousing of the "booth across the aisle sold more than me at the art fair" variety. I've seen it in dramatic action at my studio sales, where my work is the only stuff there. The occasional copper red that makes it's through the kiln may as well have a strobe light beacon on it, it sells so fast. If the glaze sells the pot, why did I bother to make a good thrown form at all? Why not slipcast? Why not use an extruder?

It's enough to make me wary of even testing a glaze like this, because it skews the message I'm trying to convey in my work. I've even taken a sub-standard bisked pot and finished it with one of these bright glazes, just to verify the theories elaborated above -- and it works every time. Scary. The result is that the person goes home with a bad pot covered by a shiny, eye-catching glaze. Sort of like a quick conversation with a shallow extrovert. Or the smell of a restaurant you aren't going to eat at. Depressing.

4) At the root of this argument is the fact that, in the "tradition" (very loosely defined) I learned in, the form of the pots is just as important, if not more important, than the glaze and decoration. Therefore, subtle glazes are used to project that delicate balance. But there a dozens (or thousands) of other perfectly valid traditions that have focused on surface. I have nothing against potters who prefer to focus on the surface of the pot, provided it's not to conceal bad form. Perhaps my knee-jerk reaction to flashy glazes is that in the great majority of cases, that's exactly what's going on. For my pots, not only am I unable to ignore that legacy enough to use those glazes, I don't even want to be guilty by association in the eyes of others.

Thanks goes to my friend who asked the question; it is great to be challenged on these issues, because it makes me rethink why I do things the way I do. I also think it's cool that different people can love handmade pots equally, but have such vast disparity in their preferences for certain styles of pots. This is just one guy talking, after all, and if mine aren't up someone else's alley, no problem. There are dozens of potters out there who'll make that shiny vase for them.

[5.1.02] [rev. 9.25.02]

Peter Voulkos is dead, alas

remembering

I ran across a classic photo in an early 90's CM last night, before I heard he was gone, that caught my eye... one of these platters, side by side with Arneson's response to it: a portrait of Voulkos scratched into the surface, with the requisite porcelain bullets and cracks, title "Pete Plate." And I recall a photo of his studio, possibly when he was also working in bronze, of stacks of them piled around the wheel, easily twenty or thirty.

I aspire to that kind of conviction; the belief that what I'm doing is significant enough to commit to it that much. I'm also glad that he made enough of them to not only perfect the form, but to let them spread out into the world -- I seem to come across them at the most pleasantly unexpected times. The one hanging over the fireplace at John Balistreri's parents house in Denver ("if you have to sell it to put your kids through school, i'll understand"); the one tucked away in a small corner of the International Mingei Museum in San Diego (this is mingei?); and just last week, in the back room at Garth Clark gallery in NYC... the whole 20th century revolution in clay summed up in one 20 inch disk.

Time to go back and re-read Rose Slivka's "Art of Peter Voulkos"...

[2.18.02]

Time

capturing time at the wheel

This makes throwing, in addition to all its other virtues, almost a salvation; a transformative experience not just in altering the physical world outside me in a tangible way, but changing myself through the process of leaving that mark. as life seems to speed up, death gets closer a day at a time, and attention becomes an ever more precious commodity, making that mark becomes more and more important to me.

This snapshot quality applies particularly with throwing, which is so reliant on gesture and trained intuition and where each pot happens in a matter of minutes. clay as a medium is so well-suited to this type of direct handling that the invention of throwing as a building process seems very obvious (after the fact, that is) - I mean, it just fits as an ideal approach to manipulating soft clay. When I think about the ways in which making pots should be about a balance between process and product - and maybe more about process, because the pitfalls of the product mindset can be so nasty - I think I have this snapshot quality in mind. Perhaps a polaroid photo would be the best photographic analogy: each pot, more than being a consumable object, is about recording all the parameters that define it at the moment of its initial forming. And for that, each one is more about being a moment on a continuum. I'm reminded of the old adage about never being able to enter the same river twice, because both you and the river have moved on. Or the biological fact that x percentage of your body mass is discarded and replaced every year (it's a startlingly big number, although I have no source to quote so you'll believe me).

For that matter, with pots it's not even just the throwing that freezes time, it's each step along the way to finished pots. There is no erasing in clay, there is only starting over and making more - more pots, more marks, more glazes. Any attempt to undo is usually futile, resulting in, at best, fixing the problem but creating others. With a material that costs pennies per pound, why not just try again?

So each mark is going to stay where it is first put, each raw glaze drip remains in the final surface, even the era and geographical location of the firing gets irrevocably burnt into the matrix of the iron in the clay particles (that one's from Jack Troy's woodfiring book, I believe). This encourages a very direct, intuitive approach. Make a decision and act on it. Then, I think, the key is to accept the results of that action and investigate what could come next from it, rather than second-guessing it and attempting to change it. The biggest challenge, of course, is knowing when to stop.

"time... is on my side."

Making functional pots is a constant, an activity that follows the patterns of my daily life, which are also the patterns that the finished pots will be used in over their life spans.

[2.05.02]

Pricing

pots for sale

Pricing your own work is perhaps one of the hardest things about being a potter, not because price is so important, but because of all the implied value judgments and relationships that are involved in distilling a particular pot down to one fixed number that - supposedly - represents its worth.

Philosophically, I haven't fallen too far from the tree of two of my role models, warren mackenzie and Clary Illian, who have both spent their careers trying to make quality utilitarian pots at prices that their typical customer can not only afford, but can afford to use as it was intended; for daily, functional use rather than as an art object for display only. While my pots are generally more expensive than theirs (which is somewhat of an embarrassment when I consider the qualitative differences between theirs and mine), I try to use that approach as a baseline, to keep the principal intact. This means avoiding the impulse to sell every pot at the highest possible price it will bring, a practice which I fear would lead down the road of all that's bad about the term "production pottery".

As should already be apparent, I probably over think this a bit. So, it's not without some hesitation that I wade into a pricing session - usually I make myself do it after each firing, before the pots leave the studio for display. When I do get around to pricing a group of pots, I start with what my past experience says the market will bear; that is, what a given pot will sell for in a reasonable amount of time (with the above philosophy factored in - for example, I don't think, "Ahh.. these teapots went for $70 last time, so maybe I'll ratchet them up to $80..."). The more straightforward and utilitarian, the shorter the amount of time this is. For example, if mugs hang around for a long time, they're probably either not very good mugs or priced too steep. Conversely, a large, sculptural jar with holes punched in it can be expected to take a bit longer to meet its eventual buyer.

Back to methodology: I take that past figure and then do the gut check test - for example, I hold up a bowl and ask, "is this bowl really worth $30? would I pay that much?" it the answer is no, I adjust it downward a bit and check again. Where that gut response comes from is anyone's guess, but I think it's useful as a counterbalance to a totally rational, market-driven approach. I believe in pricing similar items differently when one is more special than the others: a certain flair to a handle, unusually high quality glaze, a new design that seems to be working particularly well. My very favorites from any batch don't get priced at all - I frequently put them aside and let them grow on me a bit before I set them out for sale. And, in a very literal sense, it's because they are worth more to me when they are new than they will be after that newness has worn off, and my affection been displaced to other, more recent, pots.

The holy grail of functional pots is the one that is just slightly different than all the others, but as a sum total is, at the moment it emerges from the kiln, priceless to me. The lessons I can learn from having these standout pots around a while would be very hard to put a price tag on, and not really worth the expense to my customers. then, when more new pots have come along to displace them from my attention, they sort of enter the realm of normalcy again, and get a small sticker on them that tries to figure out their intrinsic worth in relation to everything else in the global economy.

[12.6.01][rev. 3.12.02]

Firing is a religion

spyhole

Consider the characteristics involved: ritual, belief, hope for transcendence, faith, not a small amount of prayer, verbal or otherwise, waiting for results, subjectivity, superstition, emotional, inconsistent, divinely blessed or fiendishly cursed. While swinging open a kiln door may not measure up to disembodied angels rolling the rock away in terms of metaphorical caliber, the similarities are hard to miss.

Let me state for the record that I am not, by nature, what you'd call a "religious person" - this is not the psycho-babble come-on of yet another vaguely Christian sect-follower trying to convince you which side to break your boiled egg on.

But think about it: all the above qualities fit into the category of religion far more readily than our conventional dualism of art or science. Yes, scientists may express hope/belief and an emotional reaction to their work, but their criteria are always (if it's to be good science) based on rational, quantifiable, repeatable qualities.

Artists (stunningly, some potters actually consider themselves to fall into this group) absolutely rely on intuition, subjective responses, a bit of belief to tide them through the lean times. But most of those that I know don't chant while priming their canvasses (unless they paint after a nip o' grampy's old-timey moonshine), most sculptors don't pin all their hopes for the finished piece on the whims of a fundamentally unstable and marginally predictable process like firing, most digital artists can at least save backup copies and retrace their steps to tell you which filter they applied and how to repeat the results. Not so with potters - we do all these things and more.

The term kiln gods is taken by a few skeptics and casual observers as a quaint bit of right-brained mumbo-jumbo, but not by the person whose work is in the kiln that day. For my part, I literally do everything in my power to appease them, and would sooner brush my teeth with 30 mesh grog than do something to piss them off. I've done everything from hanging kitschy souvenirs off the kiln to getting down on my knees in a late night downpour at cone 9 1/2 -- inscrutable reduction, finicky damper and unreliable burners all making me wish for Purgatory -- and begging for inspiration and a little salvation. If it wasn't a religion, why would I get visions in my sleep the night after the firing, while the kiln's cooling off, visions of pots that have emerged transformed and somehow become holy, entire kilnloads ravaged by demons that prey on the slightest weakness or misstep?

I don't need to go to church - I've got pots to fire.

[3.20.01][rev. 10.29.01]

Teaching ain't as easy as it looks

giving it a spin

Not only that, but after living with an art professor for several years and giving teaching a spin myself on occasion, I can say that we were vastly underestimating at least two things: how hard these jobs are to get, and how hard they can be to keep. The stats I hear about the number of applicants per teaching position sound more like odds against winning Powerball than a possible occupation. And this is after completing an MFA (not called a "terminal degree" for nothing). Add to this rising expectations for tenure, university service, devoting outside time to pampering students, etc., and making a go as a professional artist starts to look pretty good. How bad can living in a reconditioned pig-shed really be, after all? (Health care is for losers, right?)

In my experience, the great things about teaching -- including passing on your hard-earning knowledge, seeing students grow, keeping your head in the game, really mastering things by being required to teach them -- can be outweighed by the mental drain, wild fluctuations in free time, the never ending impulse to do more for your students, and the inevitable time away from your own studio. It's a hard call as to whether it's worth the stable paycheck...

And the funny thing here, which I think so few realize, is that teaching art is just another variety of dayjob.

[3.12.01][rev. 11.09.05]

Why glazes suck

carbon trap teapot

Unlike HTML, whose rules were created by humans with a specific, limited range of functions in mind, glazes are a blend of chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, materials science, hope and karma. When we push our expectations for our glazes beyond what they can do in simple, routine ways, we are playing with the fabric of the universe and expecting nothing bad to happen. Our own mini-Manhattan projects, run to fruition every time we crank up the kiln. Is it any wonder that we only get what we really want a mere 5 or 10% of the time?

And this is to say nothing of the vagaries of application, water composition, vapor firing, changing raw materials, firing atmospheres, cooling cycles, weather conditions, improper placement of kiln gods, bad mojo, and a host of other etceteras.

Thus, glazes suck -- and all potters know it. But we keep going anyways; trudging through their limitations, enlightened by their variety, stunned when they do something for the very first time after hundreds of previous uses. They are as challenging as life and as necessary as air and I love them as much as I hate them.

[3.12.01][rev. 10.29.01]

Clay mags should bite the bullet

clay magazines

CM and other ceramics publications are deficient in not porting their back issues to their websites. As of today, most of these sites are mere placeholders, advertising the fact that there is a print publication in existence and that they want you to pay the cover price for back issue content that is essentially rotting in their intellectual property vault. I understand that magazines require an operating budget, that the vast majority of it comes from advertising (about 50% of the total pages, by my count), and that while information wants to be free, its creators - generally - do not.

All that said, this wouldn't be hard or costly to accomplish; aside from routine maintenance and periodic upgrades (and that's if you host your own site), once the content is there it becomes permanent. Trying to hang onto back-issues sales is needlessly proprietary; witness the Napster effect of free content actually causing more to sell. While it's still debatable, I would bet that print subscriptions would actually increase, given that the number of new subscribers gained from the ability to sample actual content first would outweigh those that canceled to wait for it online.

And this is not to mention the advertising opportunities. While its true that banner ads and pop-up ads have significantly dropped in the revenue they create for a site since the dot-com implosion, a highly targeted market like the audience these publications feed is one most advertisers would kill for. Wouldn't the same companies that fill 50% of the print versions be interested in projecting their message online as well? And all that aside, in a community founded on the academic model of free access to research, much of this stuff is hardly proprietary in the first place, but is instead more of a public resource that should remain open at reasonable expense. How many academics and independent artists have contributed images of their work, stories of careers and processes, glaze recipes, firing strategies, and so on to these publications over the years, virtually for free? Doesn't this stuff belong to us in the first place, much like the clayart listserv or a public museum?

It seems to work for the New York Times. Hell, I'd even pay a portion of the basic subscription fee, or pay per article, to peruse the archives and to gain the capabilities of digital media (copy, paste, search, filter, hyperlink, etc.)

Another opportunity for these publishers would be connections to feedback forums (like salon.com), relevance rankings (a' la amazon.com), tie-ins to clayart discussion topics, updates to articles and links among related ones.

These magazine sites should be the center place for virtual museums and exhibition spaces, organized materials and equipment trading exchanges, the hub of ceramic art information on the web. Instead, they're clinging to old-media standards and short-sightedness, and growing ever-more frustrating in the process.

[3.12.01][rev. 3.12.02]

Safety first

raw clay

It's not that I use lead in my glazes, raku fire indoors (or anywhere else for that matter) or ________. No, most of my failings will eventually hurt only myself.

Here's the thing: I never wear a dust mask. Not when mixing clay, not when sweeping the studio, not when spraying glaze. I hate 'em. I mix glazes with bare skin, because I'm on the same terms with rubber gloves as with dust masks. Even if they contain soda ash. Or wood ash. Or manganese. Dipping, stirring, pouring, I come out of a glazing session looking like Pollack on a bad day.

Beyond that, I rarely stretch like I should, I frequently work without breaks, I never meditate, I suck in kiln fumes to get a reading on reduction, I stare in port holes with naked eyes, trying to suss out the position of a particular cone in the pack. I haul around bags of clay and buckets of slops and don't even own a back support. I use spit to attach handles (never from a cup of spit, of course - I've actually started to enjoy the taste, like stamps.) I never read posted MSDS sheets. I don't spend enough time in art museums.

Sure, I've read the Monona Rossol columns about how bad these things are for me, yet somehow I still can't bring myself to care. I've heard the creativity doctors hypothesize on staying fresh and feeding ones muse. Or maybe it's that taking all these protections and precautions would also mean missing something of the nuts and bolts reality of working with clay. There's a sense of satisfaction in the dust cloud that erupts when I drop a bag of silica onto an unswept floor. I enjoy feeling somewhat uninformed about all the goings on in the ceramics world. I get a bit of a charge out of pulling clay from the mixer without first flipping off the breaker. I feel somehow more engaged to know that I'm cheating death by silicosis, skin cancer, co2 inhalation, carpal tunnel syndrome, etc., etc. No one ever told me in school that making pots was going to be so dangerous.

I'd never advocate this approach to anyone. When I teach, I make my students do as I say when it comes to safety and proper procedure, not as I do. I'd never cop to most of this as an "official" advisor or mentor. Should they go on at this, I'm confident that they'll find their own ways to play chicken in the studio.

Some people drive fast cars, some bungee jump or skydive, some put personal lives and relationships and finances on the line time and again in a subconscious quest for excitement and proof of mortality. I make pots. But I'm trying to get better about it. Really I am.

[3.11.01]

Woodfiring is evil

woodfired vessel

This is a devil's bargain, at best.

For everything we do, there is a cost-benefit trade-off involved. What, for example, is the embedded cost of a polo shirt at Walmart, a new SUV off the dealer's lot, a vacation in the islands, renting a hollywood blockbuster or a routine trip to the grocery store? like these, everything we make out of clay has a price, some obvious, some hidden. The morality, I believe, comes on the other side of the equation - do the benefits of our pots outweigh these costs?

for every cord of wood consumed, exhaust of salt smoke exhaled, cup of glaze down the drain, cloud of clay dust stirred off the floor and eyesore kiln stack degrading the aesthetic value of the neighborhood, there is a Randy Johnson teapot, a Clary Illian pitcher, a Ron Myers lidded jar that more than lives up to the expense.

[3.11.01]

The irony of materials

wedged clay

The flip side is that many of those mines are strip mines, that by consuming even a tiny portion of zinc oxide or Hawthorne bond fireclay or cobalt carbonate, I support whatever physical and political and economic means are used to generate them. Also, we fall into the classic trap of any artist beholden to an all-powerful patronage: it seems that as soon as potters universally agree on the uniqueness and value of a certain material, a corporation closes a mine for Albany slip or Avery kaolin or Gerstley Borate. We are the shadow market for their products, and therefore don't factor into their business practices.

Surely those dwelling on the fringe between art and craft, anachronistically hanging on to practices that have long since lost any tangible economic value, attempting to make things that embody transcendence and alternatives and soul, could not expect the going to be an easier than this.

[3.11.01]

The message is a meta-message

temmoku soy jar

Selling them at a price that a typical neighbor could afford, rather than inflated gallery rates, suggests that they are meant to be used, and that art is for more than just the extremely privileged classes. While a potter must make enough of a living to continue making pots, and therefore can't really make free art for the masses, even an attempt in this direction is a strong counterpoint to a society which dictates that we take as much from every transaction as possible.

For the type of functional pots I make - relatively simple, limited decoration, uniform glazes, quiet shapes and surfaces and colors - there is an intended message of the values of reflection, simplicity, and slowing down long enough to feel life as it happens to us, even if just momentarily while lingering over a bowl of soup. In contrast to the ever more chaotic imagery of mass media (and here I am culpable in that I ride that particular horse for all it's worth as a web designer), these pots hope that the eye will rest on them and take in their subtleties. The energy that they contain is passive rather than aggressive. Placed into daily routines (rituals is as over-used in pottery art speak as any other word), they have a chance to create some quiet space around them and their users, like the way that setting out candles and special plates makes a typically hasty meal an experience. If pots can create time for conversation, thought, relationships, then they preach a gospel far stronger than any of the tenants of so-called high art.

[3.11.01]

Am I out of bowls yet?

celadon bowl

A good deal of my motivation to go again to the studio and make more work is the pull of the studio sales I've recently begun having twice a year. As a part-time potter, it seems to be relatively easy to eventually sell nearly everything I can make, which isn't all that much  - perhaps 400-500 pots a year (a tangent here would go in the direction of how there is a ceiling of sorts on the amount of pots one can expect to make and sell, without doing an inordinate amount of marketing or self-abuse via weekend craft fairs, etc. it seems to me that family, friends and a small group of acquaintances make a great customer base, but once tapped out are very hard to add to. More on this later.) But, once again due to the fact that I have a dayjob that pays respectably, the pull of the sales isn't the supplemental income they'll create (honest.)

Instead, it is the feeling that something is missing, that there are holes to be filled, that pulls me to the studio. The fear that not just customers, but close friends, neighbors, will come to see what I've created and find things missing. I know it's time to make more bowls or lidded jars or teapots almost in the same way that you sense you're due for a haircut... it doesn't jump out at you, but somehow it's just time. It helps (or hurts, depending on how you look at it) that my year-round display space is in a room in our house that I've claimed for a music area and reading space... I spend a lot of time in there doing things totally unrelated to ceramics, but always surrounded by pots - the ones that are there, and the ones that aren't.

[3.10.01]

I can make anything

"the greatest thing is not knowing what to make next"
- from my studio chalkboard

chalkboard snapshot

Add to that the fact that our media have developed to the point where modern potters have access to virtually every type of ceramic work created in recorded history; a multimedia library (books, periodicals, videos, web sites, newsgroups) of information on processes and techniques that is astounding in its scope and depth; and access to practically any material currently being produced (for a price). all this makes the possibilities truly limitless...

Which sometimes becomes a liability. How the hell do we decide what to make? how long do we have to search for a general range of styles, techniques and materials before we can even get down to the business of finding our individual voice? how do we find a style among thousands of existing styles? and when the diversity of examples around us is so tremendous, how do we even begin to approach ideas of quality and standards?

[3.10.01]

The impulse to make

greenware

For example, it's pretty easy once you've acquired a few years' skill on the wheel to make acceptable (if not necessarily good) pots, and to do so relatively quickly. It also becomes easy to see what forms and glazes tend to appeal to the broadest, least-discriminating audience and to begin to tailor the pots you're making to fit that demand. Add to that the lure of recognition and financial reward and it can become a negative force of downright Faustian proportions.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, let's imagine the hermit, the visionary, the solitary crank spinning out wares that no one wants or needs, toiling away rewarded only by his or her own criteria for success. Out here on the fringe, it would be tempting to make things that fly in the face of convention for that reason and none other (like getting a nose ring solely to spite one's mother).

Needless to say, acting in my capacity here as judge and jury, I see myself as living somewhere in the center of that continuum, with a bit of lean towards the esoteric/academic/difficult end (crass commercialism being a far worse threat, in my estimation, than some well-intentioned pretentiousness and avant-garde-ism).

The trick, to go back to my point about protecting the desire to make things, is in constantly refining, through exploration, where the most productive spot in that range is at any one time. When soapdishes or candlesticks wind their way onto my mental "to make" list, I usually toss them around a bit, pry them up to look for suspicious bugs underneath, pat them down for concealed weapons, etc. In other words, I'm cautious about making the things that could easily turn into commercialized clutter, product without a reason for being other than the idea of an easy sale.

The same goes for excursions out into the big, non-functional, explicitly asymmetrical, "what-the-hell-is-that?" territory. I stop and survey the landscape a bit, mentally retrace the steps that got me there to make sure I was paying attention to the posted signs, and that it's really where I want to go next.

Usually, whichever direction it is that I am traveling as I move away from the home comfort zone, I only allow myself to settle in and spend some time there after the dust from these questions and doubts has settled a bit. At the end of the day, whether I've succeeded in making something that fits my standards or not is the determining factor in whether the new ground has been annexed into St. Earth holdings or not -- many times, it remains an open question, with further expeditions to be launched as time and resources permit.

Even aside from my self-perplexing writing style, all this sounds like quite a bit of needless hanky-wringing and mental gymnastics on the face of things. But my point here is that I truly believe it to be essential to maintaining the desire, the compulsion, to go down to the studio and mix up clay and fight through the various possibilities on and off the wheel; to tend to all the stages in the process and somehow, sooner or later, end up with a few dozen more pots that have irrevocably come into being and that I must then be contend with on their own terms.

Without the impulse to make, this eternal process of questioning and assessing, of gauging fit and intent and success, frightful things might happen. Without it, I might wander off into the land of shameless Copper Red and Market Blue, lustily birthing lotion bottles and big, thoughtless raku vase-objects into the world, or stray into the DMZ of Semi-Representational Clay Sculpture ("a distinct category from regular sculpture!", as the cry goes) and room-temperature glazes, greedily pocketing the profits of my flight from the path of righteousness. Without it, I would slow down, make excuses, begin to find easier "hobbies" to pass the time...

And eventually that spark of desire would go out, storage boxes would get stacked around the wheel, bisqueware left forever unresolved at the back of some lonely shelf, and the studio door would shut one last time, not with a bang, but a whimper.

[3.9.01][rev. 7.26.04]

No precedents

throwing tools

Then there's the difference between working according to a set of learned principles vs. working intuitively and (more) experimentally. I try to mix the two together on a regular basis. This reminds me of a quote I read once, I think by Cardew, about "pots being brought to birth dangerously." If you aren't stretching your skills, you're letting them slowly degrade.

I love the fact that each time I go to the studio I decide on a toolkit to use, a type of clay, a range of forms to attempt, a set of intentions to try to fulfill; later on, certain techniques of forming and altering and decorating are chosen; finally, a selection of glazes and a firing method/strategy... each time the variables are nearly limitless in their combination. I could easily spend a lifetime exploring a relatively small range of the possibilities. Or, I should say, I'll consider myself lucky if I get to.

[3.6.01][rev. 11.09.05]

Michael knows stuff

"Pots, you know, demand that you do everything for them."

Michael Simon plate

Making pots is a process, an intricate series of steps that must flow from one another organically and that have to be attended to as unfailingly as the changing seasons. They demand a commitment that often goes beyond the potter's preference as to when to work or for how long.

On a philosophical level, the quote goes to the heart of how becoming a maker of things can be transcendent, how it can help you get your self out of yourself by focusing your energies onto something external that so readily accepts them and then records them in near-permanence.

There is something very satisfying about coming across a pot that you made years before and seeing recorded there in the clay the gestures and motions and even thoughts that you had long since forgotten. The clay remembers things for you..

[3.6.01][rev. 3.12.02]