Grad School: Week 27, Cellulose Hero, Cynicism, and Sincerity

     "Barrett's connection to the old papers was becoming more than simply technical. It was emotional. He detected life in them. He once found the imprint of a person's thumb on a page in a Renaissance book. 'Maybe the papermaker was rushing to fill an order, and grabbed the corner too firmly,' he said. 'To me, that fingerprint marked the sheet with a humanity of the person who made it. I could feel his presence.'

     James Galvin, a poet who teaches at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, occasionally feels the need to send his students a wake-up call. When this happens, Galvin calls Barrett...and asks him to send over one sheet of paper per student. 'I describe the paper to the students,' Galvin says, 'and I talk about the care, knowledge and aesthetic wisdom that went into making it. Then I tell them to go home and write something on it that makes it more interesting than it is when it's blank.'"

-Mark Levine, from Cellulose Hero, New York Times Magazine

There is such a love for process, history, and the sanctity of material in this article. It was written without cynicism and venerates the handmade object as a layered and vital object in our history. It asks, where is the future of the historical handmade paper headed, and who is helping it survive? The question is as essential as asking what is the future of the book? Is it becoming an obsolete object that will be a luxury item in a digitized age?

The music industry faced a similar conundrum as their product became digital and it was an industry in decline for some time. Publishers face the same crisis as they are being written (pardon the pun) out of the equation when it comes to getting books, or words, into readers' hands. The newspaper, phone, and photography worlds have all had to make massive shifts in their business models to remain relevant. Who buys a dictionary anymore or writes a letter on paper? The postal industry is in its death throes due to technology's steady march. Jonathan Franzen wrote: 

"The ultimate goal of technology, the telos in the techne, is to replace a natural world that's indifferent to our wishes - a world of hurricanes and hardships, and breakable hearts, a world of resistance - with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of ourselves."

What are we sacrificing to have the objects we love: books, pictures, letters, music, and communication instantly attainable but without any concrete physical presence? Can we afford to be cynical about embracing handmade objects no matter what their provenance or worth? Perhaps I am preaching to the choir, or maybe not. Cynicism towards the mainstream craft world, the purveyors of paint your own pottery, the Etsy crowd, and the Michaels Craft world should perhaps be replaced with sincerity and approval. I'm just making an argument, here, and perhaps that is a portion of what we do here in Graduate School, argue over the fine points.

VS.

Thanks for reading and have a good week.

Master Hand/Slave Hand Continued...

Thanks to Carter Gillies for continuing the Master Hand/Slave Hand conversation on his blog. Michael Kline also weighs in under the comment section about producing in volume and that perhaps the Master/Slave metaphor is not the most apt description of the act of throwing. Feel free to throw some skin into the game if you like.

Aaron

Grad School: Week 26 - Schaller Gallery, Worker Hand/Slave Hand, and Martha Stewart

Straight Talk From Fox

Listen says fox it is music to run
over the hills to lick
dew from the leaves to nose along
the edges of the ponds to smell the fat
ducks in their bright feathers but
far out, safe in their rafts of
sleep. It is like
music to visit the orchard, to find
the vole sucking the sweet of the apple, or the
rabbit with his fast-beating heart. Death itself
is a music. Nobody has ever come close to
writing it down, awake or in a dream. It cannot
be told. It is flesh and bones
changing shape and with good cause, mercy
is a little child beside such an invention. It is
music to wander the black back roads
outside of town no one awake or wondering
if anything miraculous is ever going to
happen, totally dumb to the fact of every
moment's miracle. Don't think I haven't
peeked into windows. I see you in all your seasons
making love, arguing, talking about God
as if he were an idea instead of the grass,
instead of the stars, the rabbit caught
in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought
home to the den. What I am, and I know it, is
responsible, joyful, thankful. I would not
give my life for a thousand of yours.

Mary Oliver 

I have been thinking back to my years as a production potter during week 26. Sometime in 2001, Martha Stewert gave Oprah some garden pottery on television. This created a huge demand for said pottery and Smith and Hawken was awarded the exclusive distribution of the ware. Around that time, I returned home to Madison, WI and on a tip, went out and "auditioned" as a production potter. This involved standing at a wheel and trying to replicate the form in front of you as the other, far more experienced potters, looked on sceptically. Long story short, I spent a few years making garden ware that Martha Stewart made famous for a time. She went off to jail later, and I moved on to other endeavors. 

A potter I worked with at the time referred to one of his hands as his "worker hand," and the other as his "slave hand." For the life of me, I can't remember which one was which. One hand remained on the inside of each flower pot while the other held tools: a stamp, toggle, metal rib, and sponge. One was a worker, the other a slave. It has stayed with me like a riddle. I have tried to put meaning to this memory, but can't seem to find any wisdom in it. Still, it remains.

I think the photo below illustrates just how fun pottery can be. Makes you smile, don't it?

There is new work at Schaller Gallery, where I am in a show entitled Surface. Lots of good pots to be found on this website. Other than all this, I am just grinding away in the studio. Once again, thanks for reading.

Aaron

Grad School: Week 25 - Ted Kooser, Process, and The Studio Door

So This Is Nebraska By Ted Kooser The gravel road rides with a slow gallop over the fields, the telephone lines streaming behind, its billow of dust full of the sparks of redwing blackbirds. On either side, those dear old ladies, the loosening barns, their little windows dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs hide broken tractors under their skirts. So this is Nebraska. A Sunday afternoon; July. Driving along with your hand out squeezing the air, a meadowlark waiting on every post. Behind a shelterbelt of cedars, top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees, a pickup kicks its fenders off and settles back to read the clouds. You feel like that; you feel like letting your tires go flat, like letting the mice build a nest in your muffler, like being no more than a truck in the weeds, clucking with chickens or sticky with honey or holding a skinny old man in your lap while he watches the road, waiting for someone to wave to. You feel like waving. You feel like stopping the car and dancing around on the road. You wave instead and leave your hand out gliding larklike over the wheat, over the houses. The highlight of week 25 was a visit to campus by poet laureate Ted Kooser. When asked about his writing process he said he liked to wake up early, around 4:30, and sit down at his desk and start drinking coffee. From there, he would write poetry and fail, over and over again, to compose anything decent. The important part, he said, was getting to that chair, because if a poem came along and he wasn't ready, well, it was gone. This is the long version of "suit up and show up." Or an even longer explanation of what an old teacher told me, that the hardest part of making pots was walking through the studio door. Kooser was an insurance executive for thirty years before becoming a full-time poet. He said he excelled at this business because he knew how to write and describes waking up early to get a little work done before driving into Lincoln for his day job, then going to the library at lunch for more research, and finally home at the end of the day to shed his suit and tie, and be with his family. It was only after he retired from insurance, that he went on to become poet laureate. Kooser loves Nebraska. In particular, his corner of the state, the Bohemian Alps. He does not accept residencies or visiting poet jobs because he would just stare out the window all day and think about home. Kooser writes about the ordinary in life and says, "you have to stare at a lot of fence posts before you can start seeing the beauty in them." To me, and many others, he is a Nebraskan legend. I also wanted to show the process of decorating a platter from start to finish here on the blog. I salt-fired this week and got very mixed results. There were a few winners, but most of the kiln was either passable or went straight to the dumpster. All the pots could have been better, but my mind had already moved onto the next project. Such is the blessing and the curse of graduate school, right now. Change is of premium of value, and with change comes failure, promise, and growth. The important part is to keep charging forward.

Grad School: Week 24 - Studio Potter, Making Life Whole, and Partnership

"Marriage, like any partnership, is fundamentally a putting together of pieces, an ongoing arrangement of fate's deliveries into a livable, nurturing layout. Rheumatoid Arthritis informs the directions in our life together, but with each decision, we must practice viewing the destination as one full of choices."

-Molly MacQuoid Bass

I am really pleased to announce that my wife, Molly Bass, has an article published in the newest edition of Studio Potter. The article is titled, Making Life Whole, and discusses the challenges and rewards we have faced as a couple, for Molly as a spouse of one who has a chronic illness, and for me as an artist, living with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). It is a lovely piece of writing, highly personal, and we hope useful to others who battle some obstacle while trying to live a full life.

For years I have tried to hide the fact that I have RA. This has taken a variety of forms. One relates to chronic pain as one would an intimate partner. It is someone that is always with you, sometimes walking by your side, other times riding your shoulders, screaming bloody murder. I rarely introduce people to this invisible stranger. Michael Cardew, although still an active potter at the time, described fighting against his body that, "had become a surly and reluctant servant." Part of Molly's article describes how to view pain less as an obstacle, but more as path finder, letting it direct your work in the studio when necessary, but never giving in.

After arriving here at UNL, it became obvious that I was not going to make it through the program unless I started to communicate. It is to the program's credit that they met this complication with grace, privacy, and support. Communicating, at large, such a personal matter was a complicated leap of faith. Molly writing about it in Studio Potter was an even greater journey towards making what was once private, public.

We use blogs, websites, and even ceramic journals to communicate our successes. They are the medium of professional mobility. This small, public revelation is a reminder that life is not all roses for artists, for anyone. Our victories are few and often hard fought. When we face obstacles, we are not pariahs, underdogs, or victims. We are human and to be human is to be flawed, incomplete, and sometimes, in pain. This fact can be a small comfort, true, but it is a universal I think it is important to notice now and again.

Please visit my wife's blog, Minnow, for an honest and visually stunning look at what life is like here on the prairie. She is a wonderful writer, photographer, and wife.

Thanks for keeping up.

Aaron