Ceramics and I did not get off to a very good start. My first exposure to working in clay was at college where the chair of the department was also the clay department head. He wore a long white surgical coat that made me feel like I needed to schedule my yearly physical exam when I was around him. He was never happy with me finishing a major in one year, and generally discouraged me from taking any more art at all, unless of course, it was ceramics. These conversations did not rest well with me, so I avoided the specter of his white coat, and went about my artistic bid’ness.
Where I went to school, the potters were relegated to the basement of an old gym building and surfaced to civilization caked with clay and looking like they had been living on Twinkies for weeks. They were their own breed, and so dedicated to their craft that we rarely saw them in any other art classes. However, they did show up for Art History tests and the rest of us gave them plenty of space because they smelled like they had just crawled out of a cave, and given their basement situation, they had. Evolution had developed their basement skills to a fine art, so to speak, so they were used to firing kilns all night, drinking copious amount of coffee, and hanging from the ceiling like bats, but in other classes they went straight to the back seats where they could catch up on their Zs in glaze-stained overalls while slides of Robert Arneson danced in their heads. (We did not talk about sugar-plums when I was in school, just Ramen noodles.)
As a whole, we art majors hung pretty tight, but the potters drifted in and out of their own weather system. They also communicated using terms like flaking, extrusion, and rupture, terms I only used if I had an onset of acne. But I also had other misgivings about the ceramic majors. If I wanted to have a conversation with one of them, I had to catch them when they weren’t throwing, weren’t glazing, weren’t stacking a kiln, weren’t trimming, weren’t slaking, and weren’t sleeping in class. I did try to date a ceramic-type gal one quarter, but I always felt strangely underdressed when I visited her in her CO2-ladden basement studio and thought I would be more attractive if I rolled around on the floor until I was covered with silica dust. When I began to be mistaken for Pig Pen from the Peanuts cartoon strip, I realized our breakup was inevitable and for the better. One more odd tidbit, a rumor that still bothers me to this very day, and the final straw that kept me away from ceramics: I had heard that male ceramists never wear underwear because it was just too blinking hot around the kiln. I began to wonder if taking a ceramics course might cause me to be overtaken with the desire to rip off my undies, and that seems like a dangerous stage of childhood development I did not want to revisit.
However, many years later, about the time I started teaching art in the public schools, I got fired up about ceramics and participated in two summer ceramic workshops—with my underwear on, by the way. I learned a barrage of new terms, many of which begin with an “s”, such as slab, slip, and slurry. I fell into the ceramic groove by taking naps on the wedging table and was officially christened into the clay Hall of Fame when I mistakenly inhaled too much silica dust and had to spend an evening getting oxygen in the ER.
Then when I began teaching ceramics myself at a local middle school, I began to use my newfound skill of throwing on the wheel to decompress from the hecticness of teaching. Throwing on the wheel became a total escape. Once I got the clay on the wheel and began the centering process, I found the mesmerizing spin took my mind to a new head space where I could let go of my crazies. Drawing, painting, or any art form can be that way, but the quiet focus of the clay was transformative. Then I began to understand why all those college mudslingers stayed in the basement making their fantastic vessels. They knew how to find their quiet, centered moments on the wheel. They put their weight behind their wedging, found out how to become still and get all their pots in a row.
At ceramic shows, I cringe when I hear people whispering about the high prices of the clay works on display, knowing how many hours it takes to come up with a refined clay vessel. When one adds up the hours preparing the clay, throwing, and trimming the piece, and firing (usually twice) the vessel, the hourly rate for finished pieces is abysmally low, like about fifty cents an hour. I love a good bargain as much as anybody else, but I “garan-darn-tee ya” that rate beats any deal you’ll find at your local Bargain Basement.
You can read about my artist statement regarding my clay works here. Coincidentally, the pieces pictured here are now stored in my basement. What goes around, comes around.