Throwing and centering

"You center the clay by centering yourself."

The Spirit of Clay, Robert Piepenburg

Inhale. Acknowledge the tension you've accumulated from a stressful day.  Let go of the breath. Let go of the tension.  Inhale. Make contact with the spinning clay. Lean in. Focus. Exhale. Center. 

Teardrop vessel.  Wheel thrown,
carved and soda fired.

Throwing take a series of slow and deliberate actions. Clay can't be rushed. It doesn't like being rushed. When you do something the clay doesn't like, it'll let you know. Usually in some catastrophic way.

Inhale. Open the clay. Exhale. slow down the wheel. Raise the wall. Feel the rhythm of the wheel. Visualize the shape. Focus.  Move slowly in rhythm with the clay. Check your energy. Stay centered. Be aware of yourself. 

When you approach the clay, slow and deliberate actions become automatic. Checking your energy also becomes automatic. If you approach the clay with anything other than calm, your rushed actions will cause a will cause the clay to become off centered and your pots may fail. 

Never at any point do you allow yourself to do anything that strays from being centered, purposeful, and deliberate. When you stop paying attention, your work will go awry. This is a habit the clay has taught me. In many ways this is what drew me to clay. In my youth, centeredness was something that I always valued, and centering myself was something that I did to an extent but not very well. The clay helped me to hone that. Now I check my energy during the day, ensuring that my actions are purposeful and deliberate. I watch, assess, and address what's in front of me slowly and thoughtfully. 

Creating

Creating means seeing the vision of what you want in your head long enough to make it real.  It means problem solving your way through the limitations of your media and pushing the limits of your own skills and abilities. 

Bottle.  Slip textured and soda fired.

This is the same process we use to deliberately create and recreate ourselves.  We hold in our head the vision of the person we want to be, becoming hyper-aware of our habits  and our ways of thinking, then retraining ourselves to suit our vision.  We problem solve our way through this retraining process as we think our way beyond our perceived physical, emotional, and spiritual limitations, and allowing our personal perspective to evolve. We identify the untruths we tell ourselves which defend our current realities so we can adopt the truths that will nurture us and make us whole. 

I realize the process is simply stated and does not capture the large amount of spiritual energy it takes to create, but this is part of our life's journey. It is part of the process in evolving into higher spiritual beings. From personal experience, I can say the continuing journey is not only amazingly rewarding, but as with all things, the more you practice the process, the easier it becomes. 

Socrates said the un-examined life is not worth living.  I would like to add that the un-evolved spirit dooms one to a personal hell. 

My Second Job

Large Vase.  Approx 22" tall

When I was getting my teaching certificate at Chicago State University, Alain Gavin told me when you're trying to make a name for yourself in art it's really like having two jobs. Your first job, your bread and butter job, allows you to eat and pay your rent. Your second job is your art. He said the hard part is when you come home tired from your first job, you have to have enough discipline to go to your second job.  I've talked to many artists and this seems to be the common experience.

I love the summer because my bread and butter job is on the back burner and I can concentrate on doing artwork. Right now is art fair planning season and I can't help but to look forward to warmer days and art fairs. I will kick off the summer with the Park Ridge Art Fair.  In the meantime, while I'm waiting for the thaw, I'm making work that takes forever to do- the type of creative nonfunctional work that pushes my skill and my knowledge of my media.