Some weeks ago, my sweet friend Shirin came over to purchase a wedding gift for her cousin (Congratulations Tekies!). I brought out a number of my ceramic pieces to the kitchen table (made of white Corian, about 6’ long) and let her choose. When she selected the piece she wanted, I went to the other room to wrap it in protective paper, and placed it back on the table.
Black and white stoneware piece for the Tekies
Shirin was texting someone, not touching the table, and I was writing something down, also not in contact with the table, when we both heard a very loud CRRRACK, then exploding sound, then a huge crash. Apparently, the table, which had upon it several of my very favorite ceramic pieces, decided to SPONTANEOUSLY SPLIT ITSELF IN TWO. The two halves of the table turned downward, crashed to the floor (narrowly avoiding our feet) and everything on it broke—except the recently-purchased and -wrapped wedding gift.
After jumping out of our chairs with the noise and explosion, Shirin and I were paralyzed for a moment. What had happened? Why, with only about 8 lbs of weight on it, and no one touching or putting pressure on the table, had it committed hara-kiri? And why, after we have had the table for years, did it choose to do so with my pieces sitting on it?
There is probably a simple technical explanation – perhaps the span of the Corian table was too wide, and it had a hidden stress fracture that finally decided to resolve its tension and split. I was more interested, however, in spiritual reasons for the breakage, if any, and what it could teach me.
Table now fixed, w/ supportive plywood added underneath
I have heard many times of the practice in Japan, China and elsewhere of requiring beginning potters to throw work—and destroy it all for an entire year or two or three. I have mentioned this here before. Although I am relieved in some sense that I have not been trained in this context, the purpose of this approach is a noble one. Making and destroying your work for a period of time teaches detachment from the pieces you make, from your ego, and from outcomes and reactions thereto. It prizes the process, the pure intention and technical exercise of creating something, and challenges the illusion of control over the very capricious medium of clay.
I found an interesting thought on a Hungarian ceramic artist’s blog, proposing that perhaps ceramics could be defined as clay in all its stages of being—greenware (unfired), bisque fired, glazed and yes—broken into shards. “Nothing,” writes Gabor Terebess, “has a final shape (broken ceramics advertise) … it is the part that makes the whole; it is absence that makes presence what it is.” Hm. Nothing has a final shape. Always transmuting, always changing, never static. Also true for people? Is it ever time to give up on our own (or others’) capacity to change?
Left to pick up the pieces.
So evidently my pots decided to change their shape, without my prior approval. It was, I admit, disappointing to collect the broken pieces of these pots that I spent hours making. I haven’t thrown them away as yet, which may be an indicator of my reluctance to fully embrace the lesson in spiritual detachment that a table tried to teach me. But all is not lost. This tiny realm of destroyed artwork can provide reflections on why more significant things in life often don’t turn out as planned.
And what to do when they don’t? The totally uncalled-for explosion of the table actually is an opportunity to examine what it means to make something out of an unintended result, and have that new effort be better, more confident, more integrated and awake.
No, really, it was a good experience
How have you responded when things contrary to your wishes happen? Both in the symbolic artistic realm, and in the larger arena of life?
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.
How different is your inside from your outside? Your interior thoughts from your exterior presentation?
Some people I know have very few filters; the distance traveled between their thoughts and actions seems … short. Others are enigmatic and full of surprises. Sometimes the unfiltered people and the inscrutable people change guises. Sometimes it is apparent that I simply have not learned enough to decode it all, either way.
Recently I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon in my artwork: the things I’m thinking about most in my interactions with people seem to show up in some form – symbolically and unbidden – in the artistic and technical problems I encounter in my work. Turns out that efforts to achieve harmony with people are on some level, anyway, not so different than efforts to achieve harmony of form in art. I regularly feel that I get the opportunity to examine spiritual concepts through the evocative processes of ceramics and picture-making.
The piece in question, when it was greenware (before the bisque firing).
A recent ceramic piece that I liked, and spent an inordinate amount of time making, failed. It was the most frustrating kind of failure because it appeared only in the final firing. At the same time, it proved to be a very useful failure.
I had applied a surface texture to it, and glazed it with a verdigris on the outside, and a clean white on the inside. The glazes, however, were apparently stressed out because they had such different formulations. They didn’t get along.
Obstinate verdigris and white glazes
One had a high frit content and didn’t budge (so I’m told) when it became vitrified; the outer glaze reacted quite differently, and expanded and contracted with the extreme heat of the firing. These very different chemical reactions, along with the shape of the piece, caused it to crack from stress. It’s called “dunting”.
Look! I've hidden the unsightly crack!
Although disappointing, the dunting drew my attention to a spiritual idea. Perhaps it was a symbolic, visual demonstration of what happens when the interior and exterior of a thing do not match:
“They … have no ambition except to revive the world, to ennoble its life, and regenerate its peoples. Truthfulness and good-will have, at all times, marked their relations with all men. Their outward conduct is but a reflection of their inward life, and their inward life a mirror of their outward conduct.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u'lláh, CXXVI)
Or maybe, “Hast thou ever heard that friend and foe should abide in one heart?” (Hidden Words of Bahá’u'lláh, #26 from the Persian). I do know now that shiny white and verdigris should not abide in one vessel, for sure. And that it is more fun to experiment with this topic on pots than it is on people.
I kind've like - and accept - the piece this way.
So what of dunting, or jarring differences between the inside and outside, when it happens within a person? Between people? In your own creative efforts?
[With thanks to A. for asking about the artwork and precipitating thoughts]
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