Grad School: Week 16

"The way you made it, that's the way it will be."
-Gillian Welch

In order to be a good potter I think you got to be just as ornery as the dickens. If you ain't, and ain't as cantankerous as they come. someone is going to come and change you and you're going to be turnin' out stuff that inside you don't want to make.
- Zedith Teague, potter, North Carolina

The question from most pottery students is: "why?" Why did the glaze do this? Why did my handle fall off? Why does my plate look like a taco? Why is no one buying my prize piece? Why are my ideas not being realized in my finished piece? A resounding chorus of Why's? This choir of questions gets less technical with experience and the answers become more difficult to find. A favorite teacher of mine would always pronounce with her southern twang, "Well that's the way you made it." And this answer remains the most basic and truthful response to questions of content, S-cracks, and everything else. Think about the way you made it. The answer is there.



Week 16 is the final week of the first semester and culminates in a committee review to look over the entirety of your work made during that time. It is composed of the clay faculty plus one or two other professors. Questions are asked. Some are answerable, others not. I like to give some serious thought to if i know the answer to the question posed before i start talking. "I don't know yet," is an acceptable answer, at least in this first year.

Besides pots, I worked on a series of tiles in low-fire clay, medical in nature. A second body of work. A work in progress to be more specific. I don't know where these are headed exactly but i have ideas, and the time to fail and re-try. In the meantime, it is winter break and there will be a lot of time to think about the least likely way to screw up my ideas. The way i make them, as always, is the way they will be.