Not a resolution...but close.

Today. During the holiday season, the studio where I do the bulk of my work closes for 2 weeks for a cleaning/regrouping. Normally, during that time, I sneak in for some quiet wheel time while the holidays whirl all about me. It is my oasis and the only thing that feels normal and constant during that time. I'm a nervous nelly. I NEED normal and constant, to be okay.

This year, I decided I would take the two full weeks away from the studio to focus on the growing demands at my job and prepare/rest for what will likely be another hectic year. I figured I could benefit from the break. Use the time wisely.

Instead, I threw myself into work, grew depressed about all the old ghosts every holiday season stirs in me, suffered through two colds and generally felt more detatched from the holiday spirit than ever before. Despite this, I purchased like the dutiful consumer, sent out handmade holiday cards and gifts and did what many of us do - go through the motions. Faking it til I make it, with a grin on my face and a hole in my heart.

I woke this morning still shaking off the last of the latest cold, but eager to get back into a rhythm of a normalized existence. New session starting at the studio refreshed my perspective on work and my lens of the world. As soon as I walked back into the studio, I felt at home. I remembered what is still good in this life, what is still alive and thriving in me. I remembered things like progress and milestones. I remembered that I still have a wonderful gift and opportunity with clay. Every time I sit behind the wheel, I have a clean slate.

There's much to do this year. I'm not one for annual resolutions, or long reflections on all the ways I'm going to do things differently in the coming year. For me, what works is simply vowing to make a better attempt at living a good life. This life is a moving target. I have always told myself, I don't need a list of goals to move forward. All I need is the desire to be better than I was a year before.

Then I looked at my pottery metrics. Last year, I reached some important milestones. I made my first plate (if you knew what a pain in the ass plates were to throw, you'd know what a feat that was). I sold work internationally. I made potter pals across the country. I sold more pieces in 2011 than I did in 2007 - 2010 combined.  In the first week of January, I'm met with a steady flow of commission requests, pending orders and inquiries. I'm already getting a strong inkling (intuitively speaking) that this year will be busier and more productive than I could have even anticipated.

In 2011, I inherited a new (to me) pottery wheel. It's sitting in a garage that needs to be prepped and converted into a home studio, while I am in the midst of considering a residential transition. Suddenly, tonight as I looked over everything that's happening with my creative life, I realized...I need to establish what needs to happen and when.

• I need to get my home studio up and functional.
• I need to work on my throwing schedule/project commitments. I want to know what I'm throwing, where my focus should be (aesthetically) and what I need to do to challenge myself this year.
• I need to be more strategic about how I present my work to the world.

Well what do you know...those look a lot like goals.

I won't make you any grand proclamations. I will just tell you this...I'll make this year better than the last one. That's a promise I tend to keep.

giving thanks.

Home studio development begins.Though I subscribe to a friend's assessment that saving our grateful nature becomes inauthentic when we do it once a year, I still try to spend a few hours of this day thinking about all the things that have produced mostly positive outcomes in my life. 

The thing about blessings is that they don't always loudly make their precense known. Sometimes they slip in quietly, or masked in the disquise of something that initially causes us great anguish. Perhaps that's why we don't always see those things clearly when we're doing these sorts of exercises. But it's important to see them all. Because all things, good and bad can lead to incredible growth opportunities in our lives. 

With that disclaimer put out there, I want to acknowledge a late season blessing that touched me, inspired me and reminded me how much love there is in the universe. 

I've been wanting to move toward having a personal studio space outside of the collaborative studio where I currently throw. I put that out to the universe then started working on my financial planning as there a lot of big steps I'm attempting to make next year. I picked out my wheel brand, then put the intention aside to start preparing for other things. 

Here, about six weeks later, one of my dear friends and potter mentors backed her pick up truck up my driveway and with her husband, they unloaded a Brent pottery wheel, less than 4 years old, by my door. As I stammered to put together the words to thank her and to find some way to return such a huge gesture of kindness and love, she waved me off and offered me a tight hug. Her response was:

"Repay me by living your dreams." 

And I mean to repay her. With interest. 

So I have much to be grateful for this year...that message and wheel are two of many. 

why pottery?

Sibbotery: Works in progress.Whenever I happen across someone I haven't talked to in a very long time, pottery always comes in at the same point, and with a measure of surprise. 

"You made this? I never knew you did this kind of stuff!" 

In some cases, I get a distrustful gaze as if I've kept some deep, dark secret. But the truth is...in potter years, I am only nearly 5 years old. It's my interest that goes back to childhood, hidden in my internal library of things I've always liked, but never attempted. I wasn't "inspired" by that scene in Ghost. I was inspired by Egyptian ruins, African art exhibits at the University Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and field trips to museums throughout Maryland, DC and New York. I was inspired by local Native American artists featuring their works at local festivals.

But like many kids growing up in a modest middle-class family, I didn't actually think to ask about pottery. Oldest child of three, you feel a bit of reservation asking about something that adds yet another expense to the household. So, I flipped through books and daydreamed in my mind. I imagined what it must feel like, moving your hands through mud, working in time with a wheel, spinning. And eventually, as many childhood curiosities do, it disappeared to make room for other things. 

As an adult, I uprooted my life when I moved to Austin. Running from things, running to things. When the dust settled on all the upheaval, I wasn't left with anything as I thought it would be. I look back and realize that those are the moments when you really understand what you are made of. And it's in the greatest heartaches that you find the very best in yourself. And I did. In the midst of sorting me out, finding my voice and learning how to let go, I came back to that curiosity. I remember sitting up very late one evening, watching the silver speckled Texas night from the open blinds in my bedroom and listening hard to quiet as is I was missing some cue. A calm settled over me, temporarily stifling my sadness, and I asked myself out loud, 

"No time like the present...so, what have you always wanted to do, that you've never done?"

 I got out of bed, walked down the hallway to my office and opened my laptop. I searched "pottery" and "Austin." I found my studio. And right then, at nearly 3 in the morning, I left a message inquiring about pottery classes. 

A few days later, I was enrolled. A few weeks later, I was sitting in an airy, dusty studio with eleven other faces, all at varying skill levels. Our instructor introduced herself and handed me my first tool set. A stiff, fresh yellow sponge. A needle tool. A wire tool. A trimming tool. A wooden rib. I collected my plastic bucket...filled it with water, and fell in love. 

My first instructor told me after a few weeks, that she was surprised at how quickly I was adapting. I learned to center, fairly quickly. By the end of the first 8 week session, I could make a pretty respectable little bowl. At the beginning of the next session, she introduced me as her "prodigy" to the new students in class. In retrospect, I think she was gilding the lily a bit, but I will acknowledge that I felt very comfortable behind the wheel. And I was not without my challenges: I was left handed, learning to throw right handed, from a right handed instructor. I was struggling with inner ear issues that make balance and vertigo a sometimes persistent nuisance. And because of the demands of my job, I could rarely come in to the studio beyond my one day a week.

Despite all of that, pottery became the calm in a storm. It was..and in many ways, still is my hiding place. The studio space is where I leave everything behind. Clay demands my full attention. When in the studio space with my potter pals, conversations happen - sometimes deep and moving, other times silly and almost dreadful...but then there are these lulls, when all heads are down, bodies tucked over the hum of the wheel. Creating. Centering. Pulling. Shaping. I contend that we're working as much on ourselves as we are that ball of clay waiting for it's form. And there is something deeply magical about those moments for me.

We're all in development. And maybe that's "why pottery." Maybe. 

To the darkside.

V and O wedging.I've been working with light bodied clays for over a year now, from groggy and firm variations to the porcelain "slippiness" of b-mix. I gravitated to them because I like seeing how glazes come alive against whiter clay bodies. 

Lately though, I've been missing some of the subtle effects darker bodies contribute to glazing. My current instructor mentioned a clay body she was fond of during her pottery days in Saint Louis and shortly thereafter, the dark bodied, semi-groggy V and O came to our studio. 

Today was my first experience with the purchase of my first bag. I always have great luck with a freshly opened bag of clay, and even though this was softer than I anticipated, I had a pretty productive day. Seven mugs and one centerpiece bowl later, I think I'll be staying with this clay for awhile. 

Today I also saw how this clay fires (a nice toasty brown). I'm thinking of doing some clear glaze work with these, to get that natural brown. Maybe I'll play with some white slips too, and see where the road takes me. 

Brought home over 35 pieces today from the kiln. Most of them are clean and prepped and shot (for my portfolio and etsy). I'll finish cataloging them tomorrow, and sharing the results here - of course!

what's my motivation?

I keep stopping along this journey, glancing back over my shoulder as if to say, "is this where I'm supposed to be?" And then I wait, for confirmation on which direction I want to turn next. Ironically, with work and most other things, I don't like being told what to do. I like to pursue what feels natural to me. However, I don't want to get complacent with this craft. And I'm also well aware of one of my life challenges...to allow other people (with more experience) to give me advice. I have a few potter pals urging me to participate in showings, to take my work to the next level. I have others encouraging me to consider how hand building training could potentially enhance my wheel work. I have others helping me put out feelers on picking up a used wheel, a decent kiln and mapping out my own studio space. All great stuff, but right now all those ideas feel like a giant marching band on homecoming weekend. All great sounds, but all really loud and coming at me at once.

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