a new cup

someone at work mentioned that i could go up for my 3 or 4 month review.  i didn't realize that i've been working at this place for that amount of time.  the time with AMOCA is going by so quickly.  there always seems to be so much to do.  we're gearing up for our Christmas sale, opening on the 14th. big plans are in the works for some new kilns and a great big fund raising push by the beginning of the summer.  I've had some time to screw around but not really focus.  the transition is still...transitioning.  my inventory at the Holter Museum of Art in Helena has to be super depleted after this last month..and i'm slowly building back.  In the mean time I played around with some glazes over some tenmoku for the gas kiln.  I was happy with the results...  but the results are coming slowly, even though we fire a cone 10 every week at the least...

Not a bad looking cup I think.  This cup made me stop and think.  I haven't done that for awhile now... you know, "thinking" about pots.  I'm constantly reading and flipping through books..or looking at pots...but for the last half a year my pots haven't engaged me in that critical way of self realization.  Anyways!...  I thought..hey look at this cup. it's pretty bad ass! (not to mention there's about 5 of these that are very similar) good job bobby!  the way the glaze rolls down the side and hangs there reminds me of the old chinese tenmoku glazed teabowls.  wow.. i've always wanted my glaze to do that.  that rolled edge of glaze is so unique!  the rim broke that wonderful brown and the clay body, which I left exposed toward the foot is toasty and alive from the iron oxide and the feldspar poking from within..the glaze itself was delicious!  like the frosting on a birthday cake.  that type of frosting a group of young children yearn to taste while they wait for the birthday boy to blow the candles out.  see how the iron that has escaped from the tenmoku has caused those bubbles and rivulets through the surface...causing that wonderful hairsfur type result from the cobalt and rutitle???  how the feldspar chunks have given the glaze life beyond just gravity..flowing around the intrusions...   oh yes!...   how fun! how serene! 

...yet something was missing.  i asked myself..  (i experienced these thoughts during an 8 hour marathon of season two of American Horror Story on Netflix while I drank wine from this cup..and continuously felt the under side of the glaze near my pinky finger as i drank).. let me regress, I asked myself.. why is this important?  the drippy black and blue, cool and historical throw back and head nod to the old pots..is that enough???  i don't know. i don't think so.  eventually i came to the conclusion that this, like anything  I've been doing with clay is just another step..a step to... somewhere.  that mystical place where pots are magical..sometimes we see it.. most of the time we don't.

it's difficult to accept a thing as another rung that's a part of a never-ending ladder..a ladder that leads up or...  can lead down.