Still Searching for Time

I feel like I am already behind in blogging! This week has been filled with grading, lesson plans, church, and the other things I have to do immediately to keep things going. So, it was another week of only a few pieces to take in on Thursday. I spent a lot of time working on a lidded casserole, which still is not finished. It is the picture of what looks like a fat flying saucer. I need to spray it down with water to keep it from drying out completely so I can attach handles and some decorative additions. It has been a real learning experience, but well worth the exercise, if only to help in visualizing how lids fit into design schemes.

Other pieces are a couple of bowls, a couple of urns/vases, and a couple of small face jugs. The reclaimed clay really is pretty moist and it has taken some time to get used to working with it. Last night, the only pieces I had to from last week that were ready to pick up were a small rice bowl and a lidded bean pot. I like how the pot turned out, but it surprised me when I saw how off center the handles are - I really had made an effort to keep everything centered and symmetric.

A friend of mine and fellow teacher is also learning pottery and we went in together and ordered about a dozen different colors of mason stains - greens, browns, blues, yellow, etc. We also got some Coleman slip, so I will be trying out these stains and slip in the near future. I brought home two pieces that were bisque-fired last week to experiment on with the stains.

I need to create at least three special pieces in the next few weeks for a summer exhibition that begins in May. More on that later, hopefully with a copy of the flier with all the details. Until then, I plan to grab whatever minutes I can at my wheel and try some new things. First order of business this weekend is to clean up all those little muddy paw prints so I can start with a relatively clean studio space. I wonder how I can incorporate the additions of our cats and dogs into the pottery design!!!

Happy Valentine's Day - don't forget to give your soul-mate a card, an extra hug, and a special expression of love! My motto for my thirty-plus years of marriage has been, "A happy wife is a happy life!" Pretty close to, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!"

cmj

Getting in the "Habit"

Alright! If this blogging thing is going to work, I am really going to have to be intentional about consistently posting to it each week. I doubt that daily is realistic, but my hope is that by posting a couple of times a week, I will also be more intentional about a regular schedule of throwing and finishing pottery. Having to juggle time for pottery around my "real" job of teaching sometimes causes it to take a back seat in priorities. What I need to do is to get myself in a rut - create a schedule that I can follow that will allow me to do everything I need to do in addition to everything I want to do. Sounds easy enough, doesn't it???

Today, my first order of business is to clean up the corner of the utility/furnace room that I call my studio. It really is a corner that I share with the washer and dryer, furnace, some shelves and a cupboard. Not a lot of room, but enough for my wheel and a portable workbench that I can use to prepare clay for throwing. The countertop of the cupboard becomes the drying rack. There is very little room, but the dogs, Josie and Bear, do manage sometimes to come lie at my feet while I work, and Voltron, the nappy yellow cat, likes to use the wheel from time to time.

Once I get things straight in the "studio" and can set aside a good couple of hours to devote to throwing, I need to get to work on a few projects that need to be finished in the near future. I really have been pleased that I was able to sell most of what I made in my first year of pottery, but really need to work on not openly looking terrified when someone says, "This is so beautiful and so nice and heavy!" So, my goal this year is to really work on making more with less - cutting down on the weight and thickness of the pieces - and to make more pieces of larger size. Hopefully, I will have something to show for my efforts in my next posting.

cmj

A Beginning - 01/30/09

I am a beginner - a lifelong learner starting out on another experience which I hope will last a "lifetime" in whatever time I have left on this earth. I have always loved pottery, but it was not until moving to North Carolina that I was able to find the time and the right avenue for learning this craft. And, so, for the last year I have regularly gone to the studio of Dan Finch and continually work at learning and honing skills in turning and glazing pottery. I say work, but it is not like work at all. I find shaping clay into decorative and functional wares as being both calming and exhilarating at the same time. Maybe it is because I am creating something. Maybe it is because I know that I can always start a piece over if it doesn't look the way I want it to. Maybe it is because clay is so flexible that , even when it does not look like what I started out to make, it allows me to continue and turn out something just as good or better. Maybe it is because I am a beginner and every pot is new and exciting. I read somewhere that every time someone sits down at a wheel, he or she is a beginner - maybe that is the real reason I am drawn to pottery. I don't have to worry about each piece being perfect, because each piece is different and unique - perfect in its own way.

I have been encouraged to start a blog as a way of communicating my experience in clay. What I hope is that this site will serve as a record of my progress, a gallery of work I produce, and a way of me sharing the joys of pottery with anyone who wishes to visit this page, as well as sharing some of my other interests with the world.

Chris Joyce