Grad School: Week 5

The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn't know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they'd claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn't understand remorse.
Lions and lice don't waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they're right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they're light.

On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.

-Waslawa Szymborska

Ron Meyers was here this week as a visiting artist and put on a good show. This is the third time i have heard him speak and watched him work. He handles clay in an incredibly immediate manner. There is no fussing or fretting over the work. Once you master throwing tight and center, it has to be a challenge to letting that go and working loose again. We had a good critique/discussion and he recommended loosening up a bit myself. He said the pots were starting to look a little overworked. Fair enough, I think.
Ron Meyers has been a big influence on me for a while now. While he did not invent putting animals onto pots, I feel an affinity for the posture and emotions his animals carry. He likened them to portraits of other professors during overly long faculty meetings but i suspect there is something deeper going on. Perhaps there is some darkness there, as well. Expressing the beauty and ferocity of the animal world, and in turn our human world, is one of my favorite topics

There is a lot going on in the studio these days, although it has been hard to find time to get in there between lectures and classes. I have been making some wall pieces in earthenware as well as collecting work for the salt firing. The wall pieces are cathartic to make as they can be totally free of function. There is no worry about glaze fit, crazing, pitting, etc. This is all very freeing for me.
The demands of functional pottery can be a warm embrace or a shackle preventing new ideas from flowing. Functionality provides parameters to work within, which can be very useful, given the infinite number of choices artists are confronted with. Sometimes, however, functionality is a bag you carry around with you in the studio, weighing you down. A big bag of full of **** that weighs a ton. Just the notion that I can work on a surface without any of the "rules" associated with function is enthralling.

Despite all this excitement, I am decorating pots to go in the salt-kiln. In his workshop, Ron Meyers said that the hardest part of his production cycle was the painting, and that a cigar and some bourbon often helped him get started. It is very difficult for me to find a rhythm with the brushes. One thing that helps, however, is doing my decorating at home, away from the studio. Having my wife, dog, and football all in one room helps me to finish pots. You have to be comfortable to make comfortable pots. Ron also told me that I looked like my pottery, and that there was no way a woman would ever make pots like mine. I took this as a compliment although he may have meant that i was thick and bottom heavy.

Until next week...