bye bye !

This is another installment of cups shipped out today to a collector in Co. I've been working on them since this summer I think! At least this fall.... Many of them have been through a few incarnations as I closed in on Un je ne sais quoi. sloughing off more layers they have gone from polished to rough to polished to rough and back again. This one above especially.
This style is inspired by lotus pods, and also tip of the hat to Whitney whose work is really informed by botanicals. I own alot of her pottery, so even in the dead of winter I have her seed pods and sprouts around to remind me of summer...
I actually sent her one of these cups after a suprise (an indescribably fabulous and unsuspected delivery of a set of her stacking bowls) came in the mail. The one she received had been polished completely clear, and I wasn't sure what I thought about it. She echoed my inner misgivings stating: "too perfect", and it was too. earily machined looking it could have come from a factory (shudder). and yet I had put literally days of work into it going back and forth from polished to rough to polished again (during which it got lighter and thinner and lighter and thinner).



This one you see above is what I gleaned from that experience. After worrying these things to death (literally I've broken many massaging some stupid little flaw till it cracked, bled to death right there in my hand and joined its sister soldiers on the bone pile). I concluded: They are like worry stones. This whole process of "etching" is really more like sanding inexorably away at the thing. holding the same position in front of some machine as I move from a rough to fine finish with only my ipod to save me. It takes forever! You have to just embrace the stogy slowness of it all, and move through it. I like work that reflects its process so I thank this collector for getting so many because I had to finish them!!! I have intention now and some designs I hope I'll get to again. I create them now so that you can see the hand that made them. Suitably this makes them feel so nice in the hand. I regret to say I did'nt photograph one that really shows this process of creating a texture and then revealing it with a bit of a polish ( back to work me!). It takes a quick hand and intention. It looks so wonderful.
My favorite pieces before I worked on the lathe were the ones where it seemed you could see my breathe still in the vessel,like it was inhaling. That is what life is: when something has breathe in it. Now I think it will include the reference of the touch of my hand.

Oh, I hope to be looking out the ferry cabin window at this soon:



It was 27 below here last night!