Grad School: Week 22, The Work at Hand, The Future, and New Images

Even as you are reading this, engineers in Silicon Valley are hard at work on new ways to delight you - gathering the entire field of aesthetic experience onto a single screen you'll be able to roll up like a paperback and stick in your back pocket. It's safe to say that delight won't be in short supply, and as long as there is juice in the battery, we won't have to feel alone. But will we be alone? Literature, to a degree unique among the arts, has the ability to both frame the question and to affect the answer. This isn't to say that, measured in terms of cultural capital or sheer entertainment, the delights to which most contemporary 'literary fiction' aims to treat us aren't an awful lot. It's just that, if the art is to endure, they won't quite be enough."

- Garth Risk Hallberg, from the essay "Why Write Novels at All?"

Although this quote is about the ability of fiction to ease the sense of lonliness, and fiction's possibilities moving forward, the quote reminds me of Kevin Crowe's essay, The Work at Hand, in which he states, "Handmade is not enough." Functional potters often take a hard look at themselves and ask, "what can I offer a world that seems indifferent?" I think The Work at Hand answers this question far better than thousands of other artists statements about the joys of the kitchen, the interaction between maker and user, and the potter imagining food in the bowl they are making at the time. He says what everyone else is trying to say.

It can difficult to take a hard look at why you do something creative, for dubious monetary rewards, that is labor intensive and often very frustrating. Why put yourself through it? Are there any other reasons to do it besides the fact you enjoy it? Is there any moral ground to stand on? Difficult questions, right? I'll leave the answers to you. Just write them on the back of a palette of high fire clay and send it on to Welcome to the Yard.

Please go on over to my website to take a look at the last round of pictures. Here is a sneak peak of a dinnerware set I made towards the end of last year. I have always believed in leaving the top of the dinner plate a smooth eating surface, while I consider the bottom of the plate to be mine to do with what I like. Food communicates so much important information. Too much decoration and one could confuse their carrots for peas, their pasta for brushwork, simply not notice that there is a beautiful meal in front of them, or mistake that grey morsel as edible.

There is a lot of work in progress at the studio. I have slow dried these long boat forms to a point where they are growing green mold. They are pretty large and I just needed to take my time. The rest of the work is moving along. Things are in process. Always in process. Thanks for reading.