after a firing

August, 30th. 2011. Once again, after a long long push of pots, and after the new kids classes..I’m sitting here thinking about my pots and what the hell I’m doing. I suppose one of the questions I have is just where it should go.. I have ideas about surfaces but the answer to “why?” doesn’t ever really make sense. I want to do it because it seems fun. But fun doesn’t really ever cut it. I can’t go up to people and say..I do this because it’s fun. We all know that that’s why artists work..because they find some kind of enjoyment behind it. It makes us feel good.. needed… important.. seeing our ideas come to life is so self-fulfilling. But fun is superfluous like.. a roller coaster ride, or a video game. It has to mean something. I’m anxious to see the results of some work that I fired last weekend in Tara’s kiln. Mostly with my plates and platters, I tried to be aware of the full range of treatment I wanted to accomplish. I fired the flat work on crowns. I made designs where the shell/wad marks would be. It’s not a huge step..but something I’ve been thinking of for a long time – more specifically ..knowing where the wad marks will be..and as a result incorporating those markings into a pattern or design. Mostly..I want to see that the process has been dealt with far before the firing takes place. Knowing before hand seems to portray a sense of the future. An awareness. I’m also continuously struggling with a kind of graphical approach to the surfaces of my pots. So much of me just wants to draw weird shit all over them. But my training has been so entrenched in form, not drawing or anything like that…. but I want to figure a way to combine them. Richard Shaw’s workshop, along with my father’s screen printing equipment seems to be some sort of fortuitous happening that I can’t ignore. I shouldn’t ignore. I have everything I need to create my own under and over glaze decals that it would be a regret if I left here, knowing I never tried. Perhaps I can screen print types of slip to go over my porcelain that will flash differently then the rest of the body. It doesn’t have to be underglazes…. That’s just one way of using the screen printing technique. Ah interesting. If it were a porcelain body..and something like helmar or grolleg..whatever.. printed in the same way as an underglaze decal would be..would that work? I’m glad that I typed this tonight. The next firing I do I will have tests of slips (underglazes are basically slips) to be fired in the wood kiln.



and then there's Lynd Ward. I got some books of his for my birthday this year... if any kind of graphical something comes into play with my pots, I'd like the marks to resemble his.