The other day, I needed to ship an order overseas. I went to my storage shelves to retrieve the ceramic piece in question – a little verdigris green bowl with sliptrailed decoration – and was dismayed to discover that I had inadvertently stacked it inside another bowl. It was stuck. I mean, completely wedged in there, with almost no wiggle room. I tried to wrench it out: nothing. I tried gently tapping it upside down: nada. I whacked it with a wooden spoon: it mocked me in its complete refusal to budge. Here is how the fused pair looked:
The green one was due to be shipped. Apparently, though, it wasn't quite ready to leave its friend and move to Australia.
I initially tried to solve this problem by researching on the internet what other people in this situation had done. But do you know what? Other people have not been in this situation. Yes, a lot of potters’ jar lids get fused to the pot in the glaze firing, and there are oodles of techniques for addressing that situation. But I learned that no one else in the entire ceramic community is stupid enough to wedge a pot – one that has already been sold – inside another pot on a hot and humid day.
In addition to feeling isolated, having just been shown that I am considerably dimmer than all other potters in the world, I was also worried. Would I have to break the outer piece to get to the inner one? Was that even possible, without breaking the inner one as well?
Before it got to that dire a point, I decided to try various methods to coax it out. The first was hot water. I spoke to Darrell Finnegan, ceramic artist and pot whisperer, and we agreed I should try some hot water to get the outer piece to expand. I put some boiling water in the sink and placed the bowl, right side up, in it. Hot water did not seem to help. It did, however, burn my fingers.
Tried expanding the outer piece in boiling water.
Next on the agenda was freezing. Perhaps if I dried the piece thoroughly and put it in the freezer for a while, the inner one would contract. I put it in and waited for a couple of hours. Nothing. Didn’t move. I was getting frustrated.
Not sufficient
My next brilliant idea was to slowly expand the outer pot with a very hot hairdryer on the outside, which was extremely effective at burning my hands, and not at all effective at getting the pot to move.
Subsequent idea was talcum powder. I know that sounds weird, but if the heat and humidity of the past days were contributing to the stuckness, perhaps drying talc would get in the crevices and free the bowl.
Baby powder: not just for babies any more.
The poudre pour bébés did not do anything except get everything on and around me white and powdery. I did, however, smell very fresh, so that was a plus.
After more consultation with Mum and Dr Finnegan, and still unwilling to take a mallet and break the pot(s), we decided I should try WD-40. Now, the concern about trying anything oily was that the verdigris glaze of the stubborn piece has a fatty-waxy matte finish that is notorious for staining when it comes into contact with acidic substances, and some oils. It was risky to douse it in oil and get it free, only to have it look all stained and mottled. But at this point I was getting desperate, so I took it outside and drenched it (and myself) in WD-40. Incidentally, I now smelled less fresh, more like an auto mechanic. And tapping the oil-covered piece upside down on the dirt and grass added to the picture. The piece was getting dirty, I was getting oily, grassy mud all over me, and everything was nicely moisturized, for sure – but it was still stuck.
In my house, this stuff, along with lacquer thinner, plays a role similar to that of Windex for the father in 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding".
I am now whacking a grass-stained pot in the mud, and starting to lose patience. I am saying “ARGGH” and “WHY IS THIS HAPPENING” loudly in the back garden, giving our neighbor yet more evidence for his already airtight theory that “That Family Is Very Odd.” Not even the Cure-All of the Tool Cupboard, The King of All Solutions, WD-40, seems to be helping.
Dad comes home at this point, and gets into the spirit of the The Situation, suggesting that I take the offending item down to the basement and blast it with the air compressor. The theory is that this will jam it upwards, or at least force some of the WD-40 into the crevices. Normally, I tend to think my Dad’s “big guns” approach is too much for delicate little ceramics problems, but this time, I’m all for it. I feel a little angry with the pot at this stage.
I turn on the compressor, which is very loud, grab a drop cloth, and start blasting the thin gap between the walls of the pots with air. Nothing. Nada. Nada nada y pues nada. I fire it up again, blast it while it’s upside down this time, and it just looks back at me, glistening with WD-40, covered with mud and grass and talcum residue, STUCK.
I am now at the end of my interventive options. I can’t think of anything else besides what I’ve already tried – hot, cold, wet, dry, air, force. At one point earlier in this very long day, I had tried a palette knife, and also had wedged wooden toothpicks in the gap, getting them wet. I hoped they would expand. They just broke.
I stormed upstairs from the basement, and went to put on my shoes. I would have to go over to Darrell’s – in downtown Boston, rush hour traffic – and get him to free the pot. Free the pot! Free the pot! (Uh, that actually doesn’t come across as intended).
Anyway, I am angrily putting on my shoes and muttering “Sassafrassa sassafrassa grumble why me” and things of that nature when I spy this amongst the shoes:
Shoe horn. *celestial music is heard*
My dad’s shoe horn. I seize it and use it to try to wiggle the inner pot. The pot makes a squeaking sound, and tilts. I then use the shoe horn as leverage, and the thing pops out.
Just like that.
No breakage, no stains, no scratches, no damage on either pot. They’re just a bit dirty.
This experience made me think of Bruce Lee.
Yes! That Bruce Lee. One of my idols.
Once, maybe in the 1960s, Bruce Lee was teaching martial arts to someone – maybe Elke Sommer’s husband? He was teaching him how to do a side-kick to the head. He kept saying, “Kick!” and the guy would throw up his leg towards Bruce Lee’s head and Bruce Lee would say, “No! Again!” So he’d throw up his leg with all his might and concentration again and Bruce Lee would say, “Wrong! Again!” 10 times, 20 times, 30 times, 50 times, and now Elke Sommer’s husband is getting mad. And tired. And frustrated. He thinks he’s doing it right, and the more he does it, the more Bruce Lee shouts at him that it’s wrong. Finally, anger welling up inside him, Elke Sommer’s husband says to himself, “Forget this! WhatEVER!” and gives up. He stops concentrating and thinking and just throws one last furious, angry kick to Bruce Lee’s head.
“That one,” said Bruce Lee with a smile, “Was perfect.”
So: Are you stuck? What methods are you using to try to get unstuck? Have you ever been so exasperated that you say, “Forget it” and then – unexpectedly, after you’ve stopped trying – something gives?
As a person who is grappling with several arenas of stuckness, ceramic and personal, I am interested to hear your thoughts on this.
After being unstuck. They look soooo innocent, don't they?
The heart-wrending photo I posted yesterday of an Alabaman wave polluted by the Gulf oil spill prompted me to share some work by artists who evidently love nature, and whose work, I find, deepens my own love for nature and beauty.
Sakiyama Takayuchi is a Japanese ceramic artist who makes clay look like water and stone at the same time. Joan Mirviss says of his work, “Some vessels appear as if made from sand on the beach, the surface simply decorated by the current of the receding water. Others appear to undulate and twist in space as if in perpetual motion.”
"Listening to Waves", 2004, S. Takayuki. Sand-glazed stoneware.
“…gives material expression to the sensation of sound and the movement of water…. Waves swirl across the exterior, sweeping over the rim into the interior to create a fully integrated, organic form. Moss-colored glaze fills the ebblike grooves, leaving traces of sand on the surface of the vessel. This effect recalls the raked sand-waves of Zen kare sansui gardens, such as the sixteenth-century Ryoanji in Kyoto, which convey the expanse of the oceans, and ultimately the entire universe.” (From the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History on the Met’s site)
I love the idea that a humble lump of clay – skillfully-formed – can convey someone’s inner sense of the “expanse of the universe”.
S. Takayuchi, 2008. Vessel with diagonally-incised cascading folds. Glazed stoneware.
Next up, Jim Denevan is an American “earth artist” who, like Takayuchi, evokes the grandeur of nature. He makes temporary drawings on sand, earth and ice that are eventually erased by waves and weather.
I'm so partial to this image I don't know what to do with myself.
He claims to have made the world’s largest free-hand drawing. Is it bigger than the Uffington White Horse drawing etched in chalk in the English countryside? Possibly. I don’t really care. His drawings are sublime, and I love the fact that they are ephemeral. They fade away according to nature’s whim and schedule, covered by the tide, blown away by the wind.
Stunning, meditative, freehand labor of love. Look at the scale!
Finally, there’s Colleen Plumb, an American photographer whose eccentric and surprising series of photographs, Animals Are Outside Today, examines the intersections between humans and animals.
Horseback Mountain
This image is so arresting, it gives me the shivers. I can *hear* it. Plumb explains that she likes to study “how animals are woven through the fabric of culture. I began this project looking at fake nature, considering how substitutions for nature might satisfy people. Looking deeper I began photographing real animals, investigating how they provide intangible links to a deeper world of instinct and rawness.”
Elephant. Colleen Plumb, "Animals are Outside Today".
Now, I am not claiming that these three artists have some sort of pure, unambivalent “love for nature”. Love for nature can look like many things – sometimes the over-the-top awe and joy we feel for the natural world can be mixed with revulsion, fear or callousness.
We domesticate wild animals and keep them indoors. We adore the beauty of creatures, but one way of engaging with that beauty has been to conquer them and decorate our interiors with their hides and horns. We yearn to walk in an ancient forest, but we won’t directly miss it if it’s gone, thousands of miles away, and if it yields beautiful furniture and houses for us. Plumb says,
Contradictions define our relationships with animals. We love and admire them; we are entertained and fascinated by them; we take our children to watch and learn about them. Animals are embedded within core human history–evident in our stories, rituals and symbols. At the same time, we eat, wear and cage them with seeming indifference, consuming them in countless ways.
Our connection to animals today is often developed through assimilation and appropriation; we absorb them into our lives, yet we no longer know of their origin. Most people are cut off from the steps involved in their processing or acquisition, shielded from witnessing their death or decay. I am interested in moving within these contradictions, always wondering if the notion of sacred will survive alongside our evolution.
Plumb reflects on our relationships with animals, and underscores in her photographs the many contradictions and ambivalences that characterise those relationships. My starting point, the photograph of the oily wave, seems similar somehow. Although the image is not a traditional “nature” shot depicting a pristine ocean, I don’t doubt that the photographer loves nature and wants, through his work, to draw attention to its destruction. Denevan’s work is fleeting; it dies and fades away, underscoring the fragility of nature and a fascination with its manipulation. Even Takayuchi sets forth ideas with a sort of irony: he thinks about the expanse of the universe – in the form of a pot, made of mud.
Denevan
What artwork have you seen that inspires your love for nature, contradictions and all? And don’t worry – there will certainly be ample discussion of Andy Goldsworthy in Part 3, coming soon.
Blobs of oil hurtling toward the sand of an Alabama beach. Photo: David Martin/AP
I have seen a number of photographs, all terrifying, of oil-covered pelicans and brown waterscapes in the Gulf region. More than others, however, this photo spoke volumes for me. For those of us who do not live in a Gulf state and don’t see the damage in front of our faces, it is perhaps difficult to comprehend the devastation the spill has caused to wildlife, livelihoods, ways of life. I think about the Exxon Valdes disaster, its attendant photos of oil-soaked birds, and the vague (if erroneous) perception that in time, it was cleaned up, bird populations have bounced back, etc. That may not have happened, and I fear it has not, but as the disaster faded from memory and from the consciousness of those of us living far away, that was the assumption.
The photo by Martin bears witness and gets my attention in quite powerful but understated way – it looks beautiful at first glance, before one is able to process it. Is that – seeweed floating in the water? No, it’s thick blobs of brown, iridescent oil that choke and cloud the water. As the wave crashes to shore, it will seep inches deep into the sand on the shore.
Never mind the more fundamental questions about greed, irresponsibility, prevention and the causes of this environmental disaster. Everyone is wondering: Will it ever be cleaned, in water or on land? How? How long will it take? What will the pervasive oil do to people’s and creatures’ physical health? What obvious, and what hidden effects will there be, and how long will it take for these impacts to emerge?
The image sticks in my head. Soon I’ll be sharing some other images as a counterbalance to the feeling of pessimism that accompanies this one. I’ll feature works by artists who have been inspired by nature. Their work, although it carries contradictions and ambivalence, is infused with their love of the earth, and their work intensifies my love for the earth.
“‘The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established,’ Bahá’u'lláh wrote. ‘The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.’ The major issues facing the environmental movement today hinge on this point. The problems of ocean pollution, the extinction of species, acid rain and deforestation – not to mention the ultimate scourge of nuclear war – respect no boundaries. All require a transnational approach.
This dichotomy between spirituality and materialism is a key to understanding the plight of humankind today. In the Bahá’í view, the major threats to our world environment … are manifestations of a world-encompassing sickness of the human spirit, a sickness that is marked by an overemphasis on material things and a self-centeredness that inhibits our ability to work together as a global community.”
(From the Statement on Nature, Bahá’í International Community)
Michael Cardew, an English studio potter born in 1910, wrote, “Pottery is a fundamental craft and should be pursued in a fundamental way. Beware of all ‘short cuts’. Begin at the beginning. The simplest materials and the simplest methods are often the best. The most primitive work is often the most refined. Potters must be artists, but they should make things that are useful as well as decorative, otherwise they are in danger of losing the common touch.” (Quoted in Spinning the Clay into Stars: Bernard Leach and the Bahá’í Faith, by Robert Weinberg)
I am not sure what Cardew means by the common touch, exactly, nor do I understand why it would be bad to lose it. Perhaps it’s an admonishment against overthinking, and pretentiousness. Maybe when you start thinking your pots are something, they stop being something at that very instant.
Michael Cardew slipware bowls. Cardew is considered one of the best slipware potters ever.
As I make things, I think about what I’m doing. That is to say, I try to work with intentionality: I need to know which clay to choose, how much of it to wedge, whether to throw the piece on a bat or on the wheel-head. As I center the clay, often the results are better if I start with a general form and methodology in mind. The steps I take and the tools I need for throwing will be different if I am making a bowl, or a lidded vessel, or a plate. To change direction midstream in a lurching, corners-cutting manner can result in a piece that looks cobbled together.
At the same time, as I work, and this might sound strange, I try not to think about what I’m doing. If I imagine how people will respond, wonder if my piece looks like the work of this or that potter I admire, think about “reception” – it tends not to go well. This is to be contrasted with having a goal in mind. When I sit at the wheel, I have in mind an aim, an intention, but not “an answer”. So much can happen as a form is emerging. Submitting to the process presents previously-unseen opportunities, including spectacular accidents and damage (see my previous entry, “Fun Fiascoes“). Also, the limits of one’s technical skill can of course impact the successful rendering of one’s intention.
All of this – thinking and not-thinking and having a goal but being flexible enough to submit and change approach if new information comes to light – led me to start working a lot with black and white. Black and white is simple and stark, and I find that its limitations help me to explore these ideas of form and methodology in what feels like a clearer, cleaner way. It is somehow less encumbering to see how form interacts and integrates with surface decoration when I am using plain black and white.
Below is some recent experimentation along these lines – an effort to simplify my approach, edit out distractions and focus on form and technique.
