Welcome! 
It's an effortful and uncertain journey from the clay dig to the dining table or ceramic exhibit. A 30,000-year-old human endeavor transforming the essential formlessness of clay into artful, usable and meaningful vessels and sculpture.
And profoundly, the most common ceramic form on earth is the shard.
An ironic metaphor for everything -- Creation Myth and Creative Process -- clay both fascinates and daunts. If it were too easily explicable, we'd be on to something more mysterious, right?
There are others out there with my name -- and maha blessings to them!-- but I'm the Liz Crain who's a ceramic artist, sharing my individual version of ceramic art's saga with you.
To reveal this ever-unfolding tale, I use images and writing of not only my work and whatever/ whoever else in the world affects it, but hold conversations with my readers as well. Together we'll explore as much as we can, stretching from formlessness to the ultimate shardy end.
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 Sometimes I think that blogging is over-rated, or even should be dead. It’s had its Fifteen Minutes of Fame and should know when to leave the stage to allow us to enjoy some fresher and more engaging interchange. I feel this about writing mine because at times I just don’t want to talk and I especially don’t want to write about what I don’t want to talk about, so I don’t. What is all this thrashing around with words? What did I enjoy before blog-keeping?
I often strongly feel this ache for the metamorphosis of bloggery when skimming the relentless bleats of others out there yammering into the blogosphere. They drown each other out with thin opinions, baldfaced marketing (OK, SELLING IT) and yawnable or precious writing. They don’t need to exit the stage, they need to take a flying leap into the mosh pit.
Pretty jaded of me, right? And yes, I know to click away and mostly do. Except…..Except……
Except, there are naturellement blogs I find enthralling, unreal, hilarious, titillating, challenging, informative, irresistible. And, regardless of topic and writing style, it’s always because it’s the person coming through the screen to evoke my response and connection.
So when one of the first bloggers that I felt that idiosyncratic electricity of recognition with, Quinn McDonald of Quinn Creative, nominated me recently for The Versatile Blogger Award, all blog-related misgivings were washed away. This bloody bloggy biz is bigger in better ways than I thought because Quinn just whisked off my blindfold. (She’s a versatile and skilled blindfold-remover, so I feel safe.)
Here’s how The Versatile Blogger Award works: If you’re nominated, you’ve been awarded the Versatile Blogger Award. (My first blogging nod and thanks, Quinn!)
- Thank the person who gave you this award. That’s common courtesy.
- Include a link to their blog. That’s also common courtesy.
- Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly
- Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award
- Finally, list 7 things about yourself.
Here’s my list of 15 nominees/winners. Go visit each one and see if the writer/person comes through to your heart too. Some of them I know personally, most I don’t and they generally don’t know I follow them. Some post quite often (even daily) and others leave me aching for another entry for months and months. They range from fellow ceramic artists, to experts/coaches, to food and lifestyle advocates. I appreciate their being here, just for me.
- Archevore by Kurt Harris MD. I’ve just found this one and I’m magnetized by the thoughtful articulate intelligence.
- Cleavage: sex, money and meaning by Kelly Diels. Dark humor and dangerously sharp wisdom. Yow.
- Discardia: Make Room for Awesomeness by Dinah Sanders. Creator of a new holiday of awesomeness connecting up several of my favorite life arenas.
- Gringado by Susan Dorf and Mark Taylor. Two friends who travel to Mexico for months every winter. They are keen observers of lush and not-so life.
- Kelly Thiel Studio by Kelly Thiel. Deepest respect for this woman’s artwork and life balancing. She’s charming, too.
- Nom Nom Paleo by Big O’s and Little O’s Mom. One b-u-s-y person with time to tell us what she cooks and eats.
- Patricia Scarborough Art by Patricia Scarborough. This is full of wry light and air along with gorgeous painting.
- Penelope Trunk by Penelope Trunk. Oh, Penelope… I can’t NOT watch you live your life and tell us about it.
- Polka Dot Clay Studio by Karen Hansen. So here’s the newer voice of a clay friend and I’ll never be able to guess what she’ll say next. Never. And I love that.
- Sequoia Miller’s Blog: ever wonder ’bout pottery? by Sequoia Miller. I could use more of his quiet deep discussions. Love his pottery
- A Spinner Weaver by Annie MacHale. Here’s an unusual kind of weaving with a prolific, passionate advocate.
- Terry Parker: Pottery Shards by Terry Parker. Another potter friend who’s been busy in her new studio.
- This Artist’s Life: Day to Day in the Clay Studio by Whitney Smith. She’s boldly honest with her successes, challenges and musings. And she can write strongly enough to bring us all along.
- The Work of Art: Musings on What it Takes to Make Art Happen by Michelle Williams. A new one by the Executive Director of the local Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County. Big ideas.
- The Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson. A blog which challenges me to re-think everything I touch and make.
Seven Things About Me…and I’ll stick to the art.
- I remember the Class Artist in 2nd grade showing me how to draw a finger and its nail from a side view. Mind blowing stuff.
- Almost took Art in high school, but the Speech and Debate coach persuaded me to drop it and take his class, for all four years. (Detour #1)
- My first drawing class was Spring Quarter of my Sophomore year in college. I took every Art elective I could after that, but was too scared to change my major. (Detour #2)
- I was an artist’s model for about four years right after college (one way to get free instruction, really.)
- Had emergency appendectomy. Got corporate job. Years passed. (Detour #3) Then: Broke my back. Quit corporate job. Began art-making fulltime. Got into first gallery. All within the same six months.
- Moved to the Sierra Foothills for a decade. Explored poetry and community theatre. Oh, and had my sweet babies. (Detour #4)
- Rounded up 30 years of art classes into an AA, finding clay along the way. Ah.
~Liz Crain is totally copying her creativity buddy, Quinn, by finding something personal to say at the end of her posts that she intends to be an insightful, touching and witty coda. Love you, Quinn!
Oh boy! Wet clay, fresh out of the bag! The smell of it reminds me of vacations by Sierra lakes and rivers. Decomposed granite, water and rotting organics, mmmmmMMM! This bag of lovely Sandstone Buff is from Quyle Kilns in the California Motherlode town of Murphys, so my nose is right on.
Fresh clay like this is sticky, mushy and makes great slime if you get it wetter. It takes any impression, any shape and, if it’s not piled too high or too thick – or if it’s supported – it holds as it dries. We’re not sure just how humans began to take advantage of the fact that clay changes in the fire, but we know that raw clay lined many Neolithic holes in the ground or baskets, the world over, and accidentally got baked hard. This particular feature of wet clay is a not-so-hidden agenda in the Beginning Ceramic Handbuilding class I’m currently teaching. First Project, after all the intros, handouts, clay studio tour and ground rules? The Press-Molded Wad Pot.
Forgive me a few more words and then onto the eye candy.
This way of using fresh clay is so obvious it’s almost NOT a clay handbuilding Official Method. At best it gets a sidebar or an “Also Try This” mention in the dozens of books and websites I consulted for deeper understanding. Sometimes that mention is in the Coiling chapter, sometimes in the Slab working chapter. It doesn’t really get respect.
It deserves better and I’m giving it that because it’s a fabulous and supportive (pun intended) way to get comfortable with the forming properties of clay besides making lumpy mudpies. It lets clay be clay and learners be learners. It directs attention to good clay skill-building: evenness, surfaces, top edges and drying, but keeps some training wheels on to help a thoughtful ceramic artist have the full experience AND a successful result. Here’s a pictorial walk through the only thing I’ve ever heard it called besides simple press molding: A Wad Pot.
Get yourself some wet clay, about 5 pounds, any kind. Find a container with an even top rim, without undercuts – so your pot or bowl will slide straight out of it and not get caught – like this “Popcorn Bucket” from the local dollar store. You can also use traditional plaster or wood slump molds. You’ll need some thin plastic if your container isn’t made of something porous that will release the clay. Gather a few rounded sticks or spoons as smoothing devices besides your fingers. And start in.
Open that bag of clay and inhale deeply, just because. If you need to, line your mold with the thin plastic. Don’t worry about how wrinkled or folded it is, that’s part of the texture the finished pot will enjoy. (And a little secret: you can remove this wrinkling later by smoothing the outside if you’re called to it.)
Grab a random-sized pinch of clay, maybe the size of a golf ball. Mush it around (aka: kneading). Pat it into a flattened shape, 1/2″ or less thick and place it at the bottom of your mold. Do this over and over, lining the bottom and sides of your mold. Pressing the edges of each piece into the others, smoothing and linking the surface only as much as you want. Feel where the thick and thin places are and adjust accordingly. You will go back over it all when the mold is completely lined.
So, fast forward to a finished top rim edge, smoothed and strengthened, a bit of drying and an un-molding. Here’s what you’ve got:
See all those great creases and wrinkles? Leave them alone for a great natural surface…or smooth them with a rib if you must. Press the bottom in a little so it will sit evenly and sign it.
I’m thinking you left the outside alone, so here’s the bisque fired version, wrinkles intact.
What serves to decorate this kind of pot and honor it’s hard-won (or is it hard-left-alone?) surface texture? How about a patina wash: thinned iron oxide wash brushed on and then lightly sponged off to leave it mostly in the cracks? It’s OK to glaze the smooth inside if you like. And that would look like this:
So, there you have it. An awesome and supportive first project for beginners….or anyone else needing a fairly assured way to make a pot. And quickly!
Variations are legion. Use different mold shapes. (Just make sure your clay will release easily.) Use evenly rounded wads or coils or “floils” – flattened coils. Smooth the outside cracks. Add stuff to the top rim. Change the shape of the pot once it’s unmolded: square it up, push out from the inside, you know what to do. Don’t smooth the inside as much. Add handles or a top rim edging. The beat goes on.
As I finally get to posting this, my class is 2/3 over and going quite nicely. The second and third projects: Traditional Coiled Pueblo Pots and Pinched Japanese Style Teabowls have been introduced and students are working to finish and decorate to suit. More on the rest of the whole experience soon, of course.
Happy Clay Trails.
You cannot tightrope walk by watching this YouTube clip. (But the person who created it is learning!)
You cannot watch and watch and watch, read and read and read, talk and talk and talk, think and think and think about tightrope walking and say you are actually doing it.
The doing of the thing is the thing and that happens in Spacetime. And as that link you just read past will tell you, “Spacetimes are the arenas where all physical events take place.” Where you and your physical body are located right here, right now. HERE = the 3 to 24 (it’s debatable) spatial dimensions. NOW = the 1 temporal dimension (apparent agreement.)
OK, the watching, reading, talking and thinking will help line yourself up right for the doing, especially if you try to be fully present as you watch closely, read the right sources, talk to the right crowds, think about it in an associative and retentive manner, and maybe – or even especially – run through the related physical motions. They will most certainly lead you to better observations, reading material, conversations and cognitions galore.
Rehearsals, all!
And if they lead you to the doing part, you might be so well-rehearsed in mind, body and spirit, you surprise yourself with how simple and honest it feels. Honey, that’s good rehearsing! As Olympic Gold Medal figure skater Scott Hamilton has reportedly said, it’s also “skating stupid.” The doing falls out of you because you have successfully absorbed the Preparatory. The watching, reading, talking, thinking, even the pantomiming, have transitioned you to the Repertory.
Preparatory. That’s still where I’m at with designing my Beginning Ceramic Handbuilding class. The actions I’m involved with right now are definitely not the real teaching. All this gathering, editing, organizing and questioning are totally necessary to manage a good run when the time comes. If you want more of what’s going into that, my recent two posts here and here do some pretty elegant expository hand-wringing about “my process,” such as it is.
There is, however, a larger motivation for aligning myself with the vital differences between preparatory/repertory – or theory/practice – and that’s because the students who will come to study with me will experience their own version of it. How can I guide them as they transit the continuum from hearing, reading, watching, etc. to doing?
We both know that all the talking and reading and showing and sharing we do are but the foundational intro or interlude to touching the clay and moving it around with intention. Hell, we all can practice the valuable Coeleen Kiebert exercise of physically assuming the positions of our pots and sculptures, but it’s ONLY when we mold, pound, coil, pinch, carve, smooth, sponge, brush that we deeply know what this clay stuff is for ourselves.
Some of these beginners will undoubtedly run gladly off in many directions, full of joyful assumptions. Wanting to do it all at once perfectly, attempting to swallow the clay universe in one gulp. Acting as if Spacetime didn’t include the sequential time part. That’s where I think the heart of my guide role is: pacing the doing. Intertwining the cognitive with the active in our tiny corner of the Wide World of Clay. Supplying a studied but ultimately idiosyncratic version of a sequential scaffold for them to climb around on, lift by lift.
Friedrich Nietzsche (that’s him painted by Edvard Munch in 1906 in the top illustration) said it brilliantly, “He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; you cannot fly into flying.”
Clay work taught me patience and presence. Well, not so much taught as forced them upon me, as I was definitely of the Fly Into Flying bent as a newbie. My endless groundings and crashes lasted years more than perhaps needed. Could I have spent more time on effective Preparation? Could I have had better scaffolding? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. Because of my experiences, I don’t expect to save any artist from their personal process. But I do believe the least I can do as their flight instructor is to shed a bright and true spotlight onto the highwire act and the ladder up to it in our spacetime arena and encourage them to give it a real try.
Class Nuts and Bolts: 6 Thursdays, 2-5pm, Session I: Feb 23 to March 29, Session II (with different techniques and projects): April 12 – May 17. Held at the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center, 9341 Mill Street, Ben Lomond, CA, 831-3364ART.
If you’re so inclined, you can call or register online at www.MountainArtCenter.org. Class is $180 for Members/$200 Non-Members.
Next time: Those visual aids! (Yes, I know I promised them last post and the post before. Clay takes an uncertain amount of time and they’re just not done yet! Think I would know by now, do ya?)
OK yes, that title is a tad dramatic. But it’s not a needy and exaggerated untruth: I’m actively sorting and defining what I know and enjoy about the entirety of ceramic arts in order to hone in on the heart and soul of this Beginning Handbuilding class, taught by me, starting at the end of this month.
And this week that honing process hit critical mass. It felt a little like peeking into a ramping raku kiln and watching for the powdery glaze on the pieces to liquify, come to a bubbling boil and then to smooth out again as both it and the ware it is coating becomes blastingly red-hot. And THEN comes the moment to shut off the gas and pull the pieces with tongs into their garbage can reduction chambers. Most of you ceramicists out there will understand this reference, but if you need a visual, here’s a good one.
All this week I gathered and listed and piled and flagged. I re-piled and sorted and started a board of sticky notes detailing each project’s intended trajectory through the weeks. I assembled the needed demos, quotes, glossary, Important Things to Know and on and on. I culled (which was clearer and easier now) and kept the best. A Beautiful Mind got nuthin’ on me!
Last post I talked about how this class-formulating process amasses information. I think I mentioned something about comparing the ceramic teaching process to cooking show demos, but I’m reporting in tonight that I’m not quite ready for that one. Maybe next week. I HAVE made one sample of a Press Mold Wad Pot, which you can see below, but now I realize it’s the first of several needed to provide tangible illustrations of the important stages of just one of three comprehensive methods and techniques I will be teaching.
 Press Molded Wad Pot at leatherhard And that serves my personal understanding of Full-Service Ceramics. Sometimes students can connect the dots, but I find in ceramics it’s not all that easy. The whole process is un-obvious, far-ranging, deceptively sidetracking and negotiable.
But that’s also the most important clue for me as as Interpreter and Guide: first and foremost, I need to have a profound and undistracted personal sense whereof I speak. If I gloss over, give the short shrift, make assumptions, it does not do the job in that satisfying way. I think I am connecting my own dots, retrospectively. As a matter of fact, I could re-title this post Things I Wish Someone Told Me Right Away.
And even then, the only way out is by doing it. So while I prepare and attempt to perfect my offerings for my new class and students, ceramics has also taught me to be more comfortable with imperfect and unexpected outcomes. With learners of all ages, that’s nearly a given. Years of helping clay handbuilding students has told me this amount of preparation is no less than the right amount, as cloggy and complicated as it can be. I’m glad it’s ONLY 30,000 years I need to review and condense and, like I said, I’m enriched and privileged to do it.
Class Nuts and Bolts: 6 Thursdays, 2-5pm, Session I: Feb 23 to March 29, Session II(with different techniques, projects and subject matter I still have to formulate): April 12 – May 17 held at the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center, 9341 Mill Street, Ben Lomond, CA, 831-3364ART.
If you’re so inclined, you can call or register online at www.MountainArtCenter.org. Class is $180 for Members/$200 Non-Members.
Next time: Those visual aids!
Step right up and lookee here: I said YES when the enthusiastic folks at the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center asked me if I would be so kind - and organized! - as to offer a structured series of Beginning Handbuilding classes. That was a few months ago and now, here they come in just a few weeks. I better get this figured out.
I got thrown into the briarpatch at the outset, because in order to write not one course description but three of them – Short, Long and For the Press – I needed to have my raw concepts of what these classes would be about aligned with my personal take on the ginormous field of ceramics. Nothing like starting right in.
Just what do Adult Beginners or Re-Newers want? Or need? What do I have to offer them? Could I parse this out and still keep it meaningful, soulful and artistic, for us both?
How much does my editing, formatting and delivery of this wide-ranging subject affect outcomes? I concluded it was puh-lenty and I would do well to start back at my own beginning, boil it down to the bare-boned basics and embellish prettily from there.
 So what you see to the left is my long-time method of distilling knowledge: get a side table, dedicate it to the topic at hand, and proceed over the ensuing unfocused weeks to pile it high with everything which might be valuable to that cause. (It’s also how I wrote my college term papers, so I guess there’s a workable precedent in force.)
Supposedly Right-Brained Creatives respond better to horizontal, visual, tactile piled-up available information – as opposed to vertical files behind cabinet drawer-fronts - and I agree: when I have a thought, a pertinent quote, a book, an article, a snippet of anything I suspect might be useful, I just throw it here, feeling rich and capable.
In good time, I will comb through the cornucopia and discover the inherent order there. Yes, I have a goal in mind, but the only way I realize it is to plow through and let it grab me. Inevitably the outcome is so much richer and denser than what I thought I was creating.
These stacks are certain to contain my decade-plus collection of notes and handouts from my stable of teachers too. Some of them have had genius ways of simplifying and Explaining It All….or genius techniques, genius timetables, and genius projects which I can freely channel, if not outright copy. I bow to those who gave this kind of effort before me, and I reap the harvest of their cultivation. Nobody comes out of nowhere.
And that’s really all there is to it. I’m no expert. I’m just someone who’s studied how to share and how to be a guide and to deliver substance. I’ve got some ideas on what sorts of things are good to know in the beginning and what sorts of things might logically follow. I have theories on how to engage learners and how to aid them in discovering their own realizations and about how to foster the creative process as it relates to clay. Beyond that, what happens is what happens and I mean to stay awake to it. I’m a Hidden Student inside a Crouching Teacher.
Class Nuts and Bolts: It meets 6 Thursdays, 2-5pm, Session I: Feb 23 to March 29, Session II: April 12 – May 17 held at the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center, 9341 Mill Street, Ben Lomond, CA, 831-3364ART.
If you’re so inclined, you can call or register online at www.MountainArtCenter.org. Class is $180 for Members/$200 Non-Members.
Next Time: A discussion of the super slo mo similarities between an illustrated ceramic process and cooking shows.
When I first began to make faux metal ceramic cans and containers – several years ago now – I created a classic red gas can, just like the one which sat in our garage next to the lawn mower my whole childhood. I titled it Dad’s Gas Can and I liked it so much I used it as my 2010 Open Studios postcard image. (That’s the postcard above.)
I’ve made dozens and dozens of cans since then, a lot of them similar to this iconic one, but each unique. The original stayed preciously seminal to me and I tended to hang onto it. Last fall I offered it for sale for the first time and, as can happen with ceramics, it got broken.
How it got broken is a retail story with a twist. The customer touched it (which with ceramics you want them to do!) but he fell for the trompe l’oeil-ness of my work because he also assumed the handle and bail wires were functional. He ham-handedly grabbed that handle balanced so nicely on the rim and pulled. He pulled hard enough to exclaim, “Hey, this handle’s stuck!” and pulled harder still. He unstuck that handle, all right, shattering the ceramic “wires” and then…….. he walked out of the gallery!
No acknowledgment of his destruction. No payment.
I posted my disgust and pain on my Facebook page. Most commiserators suggested a small hangtag on each piece saying something like, “Hi I’m not a real handle, I only look like one.” (Some also suggested a firing squad for those who “walk the ticket” and don’t pay for breaking things.)
One commenter shed a beam of brilliance on my situation by observing that not everyone out there understands what they’re looking at in the ways that I and my ceramic art colleagues do. And to the uninitiated, a handle is meant to be used, right? So naturally they’re going to give it a try. That susceptibility is built into the kind of work I choose to do. I’d never thought of that and realized the hangtag idea was not only a necessity, but an educating kindness as well.
And happily, after really looking at the manner in which the piece was broken, I decided I could probably re-attach the unharmed handle to the unharmed body, re-fabricate the bail wires and bring it back to good as new. Dad’s Gas Can still had things to teach me.
First off, how to re-attach that handle so it would be a sturdy support for the new clay bail wires which would need to be fired? Glue was out. Besides, I wanted a re-fabrication not just a glued-on repair.
 D'oh! Use low fire clear glaze to re-attach that handle!
 Careful, careful. Not too much glaze. Don't want it to show or run.  Help the handle seat and the glaze to set up a bit
There’s an art to using clear glaze as a heat-set adhesive. Mostly we find glaze fusing things together that we didn’t want it to and we counter that with all kinds of waxes and resists. In this case, it’s using that fusing property to our advantage. But judiciously and respectfully.
 A kiln stilt for added support when the heat makes the glaze melty like honey  Look, Ma! No hands!
For Goodtime Insurance, I leaned a tall kiln stilt onto the outside edge of the handle in case it should slide out of place, which would have made the piece truly unrepairable. Because the outside was finished entirely with underglazes, I chose not to use anything to prevent the stilt and handle from sticking together. But when I went to bed, I began to worry that was a mistake. Whew.
Next up, re-creating those bail wires. This proved to be as straightforward as the process I go through in the first place. The only real consideration was creating enough play for natural shrinkage around points that were already vitrified and as shrunken as they were gonna get. It would be a bummer to get the new wires happily crafted only to have them crack because they got stuck and couldn’t move in place.
 Miles of hand-extruded clay bail wire, two feet at a time.
 New raw clay bail wires recalling the gestures of the originals with some free play for shrinkage  Staining the bail wires with Coffee Brown underglaze to suggest the look of tired old metal
There were a few markings on the top left by the former bail wires, so I used them and photographs of the can to help me form the new wires into a semblance of the first rendition. In the years since I made this can, I’ve learned how to support the wires better within the circumference of the top and gave these new wires the benefit of that experience as well.
I was tempted to just leave things out to dry, but I decided to dry them slowly under plastic for a few days and candle overnight before cranking the kiln up again. This time to a lower temperature than the one I fired the handle re-attaching to: don’t want that glaze to get too soft and stretch anything!
 Very low temperature firing of the bail wires with more propping in the kiln
And here’s the good as new (maybe better!) re-attached handle and re-fabricated bail wires on Dad’s Gas Can. All it needs now is a friendly hangtag to help folks know that it’s ceramic trompe l’oeil.
 "Hey, This Handle's Stuck!"
 Is there a name for the Muse of Blogging?
At a workshop early last fall, I asked the presenter, ceramic artist Wesley Anderegg, how his ideas for new work came to him. Did he have a backlog waiting to draw from? Was it a sudden inspiration? A visual image? A concept? After all, his work uses Concept as a long suit, often leaning on a quirky visual pun in support of it. To my surprise, he laconically replied that in truth the title of the piece came to him first, and the rest of the work followed along in embodiment of it.
Now that’s an odd bit of insight, which I recognized instantly as a ratification of own my creative Step One, not so much of my visual art process – that’s as visual as visual can be – but rather, that’s exactly my blog writing process.
The Title presents itself as a fulmination of Something I Have to Say. Those slippery snippets of insight, the wry and dulcet posits and synchronous happenstances that make up my world? They unite, distill themselves and wander into my frontal lobe in the form of words.
The Title must also be delicious and tantalizing enough to impel me away from whatever else I am taken up with. Ideally, it should plant me at the keyboard and keep me there to slog through the typing, the inserting, the looking up, the linking, the editing, the tagging, and the publishing. And the re-editing and re-publishing. Folks, it just doesn’t write itself.
If I miss getting to the writing apace, I capture the Title Headline Idea and the motley insights for it on whatever writable surface I’m near. For months now, that’s been the case, as I was way too busy cranking in the studio. The result of which – besides a ton of new work - is I have a sizable clutch of suggestive blog titles I know I’m not likely to turn into full blown posts. They were written on the ice and the ice melted.
You know where I’m headed with this, right? In order to release their energy and un-snag mine so as to be able to write afresh, I want to share them here. This amounts to a cyber-version of letting go of clutter, a la my new found holiday, Discardia. (Which you, too, should seriously go investigate and celebrate.)
So, let’s pull them out one by one and see what might have been some incalculably awesome reading. Yes, yes, I could have just recycled it all, but this will be more fun.
1. Under the Hood with String Theory and The Swerve; This comes from the book I was reading (The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt) and an email conversation with a friend. My cryptic subnotation reads, “proposing unifications and reasons, strings swerve.” On the same note: “Tuvan Throat Singing.” “Feynman.” Click on the links for a glimmer, cuz that’s all I have now.
2. The Mess-up; “1.One supervised experience with a hot stove. 2. How it goes terribly wrong. 3. The itch you can’t scratch. 4. What happens when it goes wrong and our reaction to what happens. What happens after that.” OK, I know this had to do with making mistakes as a learner and, as an instructor, guiding students through mistakes, or even letting them happen. And I recall I wanted to talk about expectations and perfectionism.
3. In Which I Attempt to Explain Myself; No further explanations available.
4. Flaccid Visors, Dead Elements and Other Tolerations; Meant to be a discussion of the needless annoyances we put up with, even adapt around, but how they still negatively invade our psyches. Yet, just like the Circus Trees, it can also become its own artform.
5. Singing Wrong Right; My notes say: “Brush abuser” (clearly a self-reference) “Skate Stupid” and “practice, practice, practice.” Not sure how all that quite fit together, but I think it was about bending the rules with confidence.
So, that’s five Phantom Blog Titles with Notes, gone, but now never to be forgotten. I kiss them fondly and wish them well, like old boyfriends, knowing they gave as good as they could at the time, and so did I. Yet, it’s now Now and new titles keep arriving in my mind. Think I will grab one of those and sit down at the keyboard soon.
 Garden Variety Rust Arrayed in a netting of motley spots, swaths of lichen-like crusts or perhaps in random streaks of dull over shiny, rust – a result of iron oxidation – is a fascinating study. Its visual appearance speaks more of an event or process (entropy?) than of a static state of being, making it both unremarkably common and maddeningly unique.
To create the look of a vintage metal container in clay, I find I need to constantly scrutinize how rust interacts with its subject. Notice how it invades a formerly new surface, how it spreads on edges and dings, the extent of its reach on the salient and the crenelated. How many colors are on those few square inches? Cream, ochre, peach, terra cotta, roan, burnt umber, ebony. You can’t make this up.
If I only wanted a rusty color on my work, though, I could choose one from the underglaze crayon box and have at it. OK, maybe two colors. But I want more: I want my ceramic surfaces to be believable as real rust, real metal, especially in that initial gander. Yet, in the next glance, I want the viewer to fully notice that it’s not real rust, not real metal and then waver between the two sensations, not quite believing either version of what the eyes and mind are telling them. Trompe l’oeil in action! I want them to have to look again and – very important – to reach out and dare to sneak a touch. And just maybe need to take the piece home for further contemplation and remarking.
I’m also wary of crafting too-exacting of a replica of a rusty container, because, like a kid in Sunday Best, the piece then has to behave too much and lacks rambunctiousness. Take a picture! Get the real thing instead. I prefer to create a compelling interpretive impression of form and surface instead of executing a physical inventory report.
In both shape and coloration, I want evidence of my subject’s imagined narrative. What’s the story in each piece? Did this can get tossed into a roadside ditch? Was it butt-down in a mid-last-century dump? In what part of his musty basement workshop did Grandpa store this? Where’s the lid and what broke off right here? Did the graphics fade evenly with time, or only on the side they got decades of sunlight and weather? Rust is nearly always involved in this equation. Best to bump up the study.
It’s another delicious case of Learning to See and Seeing to Learn. Photos are great for starters and finishers, and I use them often for detail suggestions, but the meat in this sandwich is reality. It requires looking at a lot of real rust (which fortunately for me is nearly everywhere) and then acting on those observations, sprinkling them with imaginative narratives.
Knowing that authentic props help, people give me rusty stuff and unusual vintage metal containers. Or they tell me where to find them. My favorite Rusty Things Walk ever is the completely littered desert just across Highway 127 from the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel in Death Valley Junction, an old borax mining company town. For miles around, the wild and enduring encrustation of broken machinery and glass coupled with the scrubby scrub, widest of skies and Eagle Mountain in the near distance pleases my soul. So does a collected boxful of odd bits: square rebar, glass shards with rusted chicken wire inside, a child’s toy and, always, cans with bullet holes.
That’s my kind of vacation: a learning one with the time, space and silence to ponder and to let rust whisper its secrets. Later its messages will find their way to my hands in the studio. Lessons learned.
 Rust Never Sleeps: Vintage Conetops
It turns out Kit Carson, the man, was next-to-nothing like Kit Carson the Legend. The man was guilelessly honest, reliable, soft-spoken – maybe even taciturn – loved Indians, his Taos ranch, wife and children.
Yet he was also a consummate wanderer for justice, showing up in history, Forrest Gump-style, to save the bacon butts of many famous explorers and soldiers in the first half of the American 19th century, that unsettled and questionable time of nation-forming and Manifest Destiny.
He was a smallish man, modest and ashamed of being illiterate, but he fluently spoke something like 14 languages, most of them Indian, which had to have come in handy. A natural leader, his personal bravery in sticky situations led him to proficiency in making crunch-time choices that were nearly always right. He once walked 25 barefoot, unhydrated miles (lasting over 30 hours) through the rocks, cacti and varmints of the Southern California desert – having removed and then lost his boots and canteen – to sneak silently past a Mexican Army siege encampment in order to bring reinforcements from San Diego and wrap up 1846 solidly in American favor. No wonder he fell into the League of the Legendary. He didn’t mean to, it was just what resulted as he addressed each problem in front of him.
Time. Temperament. Talent. We make our marks from the marks that make us. We might be born that way, but there are always kinks, wrinkles, simple twists of fate, and callings we hate, but answer nonetheless.
Kit Carson, the man, became alive to me as I worked long days in the studio last June, listening to the 17 CDs of the book Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides; a masterful intertwining tale of one man and a few uncertain decades nearly two hundred years ago. For me the book’s tale also spawned juicy associations to family, friends, artists and my own creative process.
As I fell into a studio rhythm with the sweeping story, it was not lost on me that frontiers abound in more than just the physical or temporal way. Perhaps frontiers are limnal Absolute Thresholds, as opposed to defined portals, which make it unclear when one has passed through. I’ve always compared my important creative/life interests to climbing up the mesa wall in search of the tabletop which is large enough to wander around on for a lifetime. I know I have found that in clay, but long for the specifics. Often, with no details, I just trust and show up to do my job (thank you again Elizabeth Gilbert.)
I also was struck by an NPR interview with Eric Fischl, the painter and sculptor, in which he inadvertently revealed to me why listening to stories while I work is a valuable and supportive non-visual practice. He said, “…and if you’re making a sculpture, modeling a sculpture, oftentimes your hand moves away from what your eye can see, and it begins to inform the eye and inform the mind in a totally different way because the hand is full of memory, but it’s memory that only touch can unlock.” By shaping and coloring the clay, while my mind roams the American West with Kit Carson, I distract ego-self and go to the place only touch knows.
So the doing, the touching, but not the thinking and watching, reveal the specifics I seek. Get in there and make art, while you move your eye and mind to a safer and slower spot.
Kit Carson was idolized as a swashbuckling stallion-riding woman-saving hero in the dime novels known as Blood and Thunders, but the real Kit Carson preferred to ride a mule all over the wide-ranging West, often alone, and wanted no part of ego-filled glory. And so shall I, in metaphoric parallel, ride the mule of my craft, slowly, intentionally, uncomplainingly and daily.
 Love Karen Hansen's playful WallHeart I could have said paean or laudation or even, dare I, encomium, but panegyric was the big ass word I needed for this public praise piece about my Art Buddy Karen Hansen.
So, without tons of backstory, and letting the photos describe her ceramic art, what’s good about Karen as an Art Buddy?
 What's she DOING in there? (Karen Hansen, greenware) She’s Magnetic. It’s got to be about Frequency (or is it pheromones? I forget.) No matter, when I’m in classes with her, I want to know what she’s doing, thinking, making. It matters to me a whole bunch. Even though our styles are divergent, they’re sourced from similar resonances and I simply need to be around that to channel the muse and protect me from the detrimental energies in the room.
 You know, deep down inside, TV is good for you! (TV Wall Plaque - Karen Hansen) She’s Associative. That means that she collects her fascinations from nearly any quadrant and synthesizes them into enjoyable quirky meanings. A quick study of human foibles, she makes good fun of nearly every thing and every body. She’s facile with words and slippery thoughts. As a matter of fact, that might be her true medium. But it comes out in the clay too.
 Half Empty? Half Full? Nope, just 1/2. Deal. (1/2 Lidded Jar - Karen Hansen) She’s Versatile and Steady. Adaptive and Constant. Ever-changing and Predictable. Do I speak in parables and opposites? Yes. Because it’s true. I’ve probably quoted it before, but it was Steve Allen (or maybe Marshall McLuhan) who said, “The funny man (sic) is a man (sic) with a grievance.” If we go beyond the oppositions, we find the unifying core of humanity in both tragedy and comedy and I enjoy that skill in Karen.
 Karen's Playland (or one of them...) Hey, I see that oil can back there! She Brings It Basically it’s a Full Catastrophe Package with Karen. Equally capable of shop talk, philosophy, baudiness, pop culture or fine art references, and animal humor, she most humbly reveals her passions. She can simultaneously complain and assess, with chuckles. She buys my art, too, astounding me.
 Skullheart, Pitfired babydoll head, Pillsbury Doughboy, Candies and dial tile...the beginning of my Karen Hansen art collection Well, I mean to say I’m pretty fond of her. Art Buddies cannot be conjured. They ARE. I have a modest shelf of Karen’s treasures, pictured above. Some I traded with her, some I just purloined from her “extras.” Karen would modestly say these pieces reflect more about the eye of the beholder (me) than the maker (her), but I like them because they hold her special juju. Back to that vibe thing. And I want MORE stuff in this collection, especially of her newer work.
 Polka Dots and Spirals for Everybody (Lidded Jar - Karen Hansen) Fortunately for all of us, she recently entered the art market, a move I applaud. There’s her Etsy Shop, Polka Dot Clay Studio where you can see and buy lots more of her fun style for yourself. And there’s the Santa Cruz Open Studios Art Tour 2011, which we’re both still waiting to hear about our acceptance.
 One Word: Birds (Lidded Jar - Karen Hansen) Conspirators. Birds of a feather. Com-madres. That’s how I feel about knowing Karen and her art. Did I heap enough public praise? Did I use enough illustrations? I hope so.
 Corazon Espinado in the most exquisite way. (Wallheart - Karen Hansen) Thanks, Karen!
In terms of ceramic art, mine and others, I did it up royally last weekend. That means I went for maximum effort and uber-luxe spectacle by attending and participating in both the California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Art AND the Santa Cruz Clay Show and Sale at Bargetto Winery.
Friday: To Davis, CA and back (2.5 hours each way) in 12 hours. The other 7 hours we were NOT in the car, we toured 45 exhibits and demos at the 22nd annual CCACA. What a whirlwind of wonderful work! I’m always dumbfounded by a few pieces and suitably inspired by a great many more. For the first time, I was kinda sad not to have the whole weekend there.
Biggest showstopper of course: Cabrillo College’s outdoor exhibit titled “Hard Times.” Described as “a social comment on the economic down-turn and a trompe l’oeil ceramic art installation.” My all-ceramic aquarium piece, which I have previously spoken of, was made for this. Here are a few shots, a street view and one from the uphill side of things.
 It was almost TOO realistic!  Anything not white is ceramic! All the “pedestals” are pieces of furniture. Everything else is a ceramic treasure. (Well, you already know the aquarium is glass…) It’s daring to take an outdoor space and fill it with such a large concept. And when the sprinklers went on Sunday morning, the aquarium even held some water.
Saturday and Sunday: My first away from my studio outdoor ceramic booth set-up and sale. I called it a Pop-uP Pottery Village. It contained a population of around 25 local ceramic artists. We were all lined up in row and around a courtyard, representing an impressive range of pottery and sculpture, featuring artists old and new to both the craft and the sale. (Me? Definitely a Newbie on all counts, really.)
I found an authentically playful way to engage my visitors and my colleagues, felt surprisingly comfortable and pleased with how it turned out. At the end of Sunday, all my business cards were gone, I added a dozen new fans to my mailing list, made respectable sales, got a couple of leads to galleries (!) and found out I must have a bigger vehicle in order to safely hold the booth, furniture, display shelves and all the carefully packed boxes of breakable work.
Here are two views of my booth set-up, front view and from behind the “counter.”
 Yeah yeah, I really need some signs!  I asked my visitors if I was the appetizer or the dessert. It was probably a good thing to be so incredibly busy because my game got really tight. Not only did I survive some completely new ventures, I was energized and encouraged by them. A few things still need to be put away, the studio needs a good clean-out, but I am happily aware of how getting out there completes the creative cycle for me. Each time round is less scary and confusing and I savor the recharged impetus to make more work. And, best of all, thankfully these two events will NOT be on the same weekend in 2012. Yes!
 This is the only kind of aquarium I really like ~Liz Crain “Apparently We’re Not Fish People” is the title of my finished ceramic aquarium piece in the photo above. It’s all ceramic except the actual glass/plastic aquarium.
You may remember my earlier posts about making ceramic aquarium gravel. It was for this piece, and not a live aquarium!
Since those posts, I’ve made the super funky retro diver, the precious merbaby, and wrecked columns, the small Asian boat, rocks, shells and logs. Also the Japanese pump box, old school heater and cord, Tetra Min food cannister, Ph test strip bottle and Ick Rid sample envelope.
It’s all done in time to travel to the California Conference for the Advancement of Ceramic Art (CCACA, pronounced SEE-KA’-KA) in Davis, CA this weekend. It will be a small part of Cabrillo College’s outdoor installation entitled “Hard Times.” Photos of THAT coming soon.
I’m completely taken up with the rest of the preparations for not only the Davis conference, but for my first foray into selling my work at an outdoor ceramics show and sale with the Santa Cruz Clay folks at Bargetto Winery in Soquel. It’s packing and pre-packing all the time now…..Day trip to Davis Friday, then Saturday and Sunday in my booth in the Santa Cruz Spring sunshine.
So, off I scoot, leaving you with one more view of my latest narrative sculpture.
 The title was taken from a Craigslist ad
 How much can one bowl contain? (Joseph McBride) Last week I bought this sweet bowl directly out of the hands of my friend, mentor and colleague, Kathryn McBride. It’s not her creation, it’s her young adult son Joseph’s.
Joseph’s work is generally not offered for sale. He was donating it to a fundraiser and this was a scarce moment of opportunity. It’s a generous receptacle; a patiently hand-stamped, piebald copper red-glazed, evenly thrown bowl with a well-crafted foot and a subtle hand-pinched rim. I short-stopped it on its way to the fundraiser and sent my check to them instead.
When I placed it in the center of my round oak dining table, it began whispering, then humming, then ringing as clear as a temple bell, inviting me to not just notice the energies it has as a work of art, but to delight in the connections one bowl can forge in personal, local, and international ways.
Preponderance of the Personal
As a form in space, this bowl is a concave mandala, a vortex of radial symmetry. It dances with the Japanese notan of light/dark and positive/negative. It can hold anything and nothing equally gracefully.
The bowl also contains a few metaphoric miles of my journey with Kathryn, as we parented our similarly-aged sons and shared our personal and creative challenges. That Joseph — despite his many other interests and talents and being “raised in clay” — found his own way in ceramics is delightful and unexpected. I’m among a pantheon of proud Aunties.
Local Hands
Joseph told me he originally didn’t intend to even bisque fire this bowl — since it apparently didn’t meet his sliced-thin standards –but a fellow potter friend disagreed and sent it to the kiln unbeknownst to him. He eventually glazed it differently than his other bowls. It’s a bit of a renegade, this piece, off on another path entirely. A Wilbur the runt piglet saved by Fern. I was pleased that he was pleased I bought it.
An Ocean of Ripples
When the giant earthquake wracked Japan last March, it shook the brick climbing kilns of the ancient pottery town of Mashiko, crashing them to the ground. Like the tsunami waves that were generated throughout the Pacific Ocean, the circles of ceramic concern radiated out, touching the pottery community here in Santa Cruz. Many I know have pilgrimmaged to Mashiko. Those waves continued to England, too, because of the profound 20th century association of Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada, which changed the ceramic cultures of East and West everlastingly.
Global Hands
Quickly, quickly, quickly a heartbroken but energetic group of Santa Cruz potters sent out the call: Please donate whatever ceramic work you can to a fundraiser, all proceeds going to help Mashiko recover its livelihood. Leach Pottery in England is doing similarly and I’m sure there are more.
Joseph was donating to this event and I bought his bowl. A lot of dedicated ceramic work came into being for what I hear was a supremely successful effort. Joseph’s rogue bowl of loveliness will help more bowls to be made in Mashiko.
All because I listened to it, the patterns and colors of one engaging big red bowl revealed spirographic loops of personal beauty, of friendships, of compassionate local artists and of a globally overlapping web of potting communities.
 Today's Kiln Yield (the good ones, anyway) Before delving into the main question, here’s what I mean by a Blog Blast. For the past few years I’ve written longish posts. I compose and edit as I go (a not so good idea), making nifty essays which even I did not have time to read, even though they were worth it, IMHO. No more. Here’s to the short, pithy, candid and extemporaneous post. Longer than a Tweet or a Status Update, shorter than War and Peace, or even a term paper. Still worth it. Still friends.
All Bow!
I know what I want from my ceramic endeavors: the realization of what I had in my head to begin with, only better! I want the Kiln Gods to undo my ham-handedness, my fear and laziness, my lack of knowledge and brain farts. I want nothing less than Transformational Magic, that slice of perfection that no ceramic piece in the world has heretofore attained…until now. All bow.
I’m no different. And sometimes I do get that, briefly. As in performance arts, I feel I am only as good as my last kiln opening. So, when I don’t get the fairy dust, this is how I understand it.
Did I Take the Short Way Home?
Warps, cracks and breakage is the norm for mishandled clay. Glazing faults abound: wrong material/color choice, misapplied, too shiny, streaky, runny, bubbled. These are obvious flaws (except when they’re not because you wanted this exact messed-up result. After all, it’s contemporary art we’re talkin’ about!) Flaws are mostly not too fixable. Better to love and honor the quirky properties of clay and glazes on the front end. But when it does not go well in these departments, have your disappointment, even your everlasting shame and tantrum, then get out the hammer and start over. Oh, and learn to gently amend and refire a little too. Smash seven times, make anew eight. Get back on the cylinder that threw you. Learn to fly with your craft, bird by bird. No way out but the long way.
Got Appreciation for What Is?
What’s harder to understand is when a piece is gorgeous, but just not the specific gorgeous its creator intended. It happens to all of us: the heatwork of the kiln changes things and we hold treasure and call it trash only because it wasn’t what we ordered. The piece is too dark, off the expected color, bled or shrank weirdly. Whatever it is, it failed to meet our prior specs and we’re ready to smash once again. But wait! Tuck this one away somewhere, maybe for months, and then look at it without the pangs of former expectations. You might return to the “amend and refire” mode, you might decide it’s a true goner, or you might see it for what it is.
What to Want
And here’s the Tricky Bit: Don’t settle for “good enough.” Good: the enemy of Best, right? While it might sound like I suggest seeking only objective perfection, it’s really personal excellence which excites me. I may joke about wanting it all from the Kiln Gods, but I know what I alone put out there steeped in my heartfelt best comes back. Often better than I know to want, challenging me to keep stretching. I seek repeated opportunities to do exactly that.
That’s what (ceramic) artists really want.
 Investigate Everything! Some of you might not want to parse out what makes one thing more beautiful than another. I completely understand. Keats complained that Newton had “destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism.”
I’m here to meld that duality and I contend further that prism and poetry can co-exist fruitfully. In fact, in order to make my best art, I require that generation of The Third which emerges from Opposites.
I’ve tried the romance of just messing around with the crayons, the keyboard, and the clay, rather juvenilely hoping that the lightening bolt of genius will make a lucky strike. (Even sometimes thinking it actually did, for me.) Ultimately, though, it’s like playing Blackjack: while the odds are better than most games of chance, they still are in the House’s favor, not mine.
Goal-less and right-brained fooling around is creatively essential, but it is a warm-up: the beginning doodle, the free-write, the initial pinching, coiling and rolling. It so rarely makes it to that zen place of offhanded perfection, as much as we might be glancing over our shoulders to see if it did.
To take my craft into beauty and excellence –leaving the lightening bolts to shock themselves –I explored the nature of the creative process, studied Color Theories and The Principles and Elements of Art until I felt conversant and sometimes even fluent.
In other words, I got scientific and it helped. Now I could not only wonder at the rainbow’s glories, I could unweave it and put it back together in my own poetic way.
When I changed my art-making from 2D mixed media to 3D ceramics, a whole new set of loveliness standards came into play. What about Line and Form in Space? What about that Viewer in motion around the piece – or actually using it? What about Front, Side and Back? Top and Bottom?
So…. besides sticking to the work in my studio evolving my efforts, besides near constant conversations with mentors, colleagues, fellow enthusiasts and supporters, besides Art History courses and museum gallery visits, and besides deep thought on what motivates and thrills me, I read books.
And here are those that I deliciously don’t quite understand, but every time I delve through them, a little more is revealed:
The Nature and Art of Workmanship and The Nature and Aesthetics of Design, both by woodworker David Pye. If you click on the links, you will get descriptions and reviews. (Don’t miss the one for the Design book by wiredweird! I can’t describe the power of this book any better.)
Li: Dynamic Form in Nature by David Wade
And two exploring the realms of Sacred Geometry, whose philosophies lie at the heart of my seeking the Music of the Spheres in all I do.
Sacred Geometry by Miranda Lundy
The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies in Nature, Art and Architecture by Gyorgy Doczi. The cover of my edition gives a hint of how the author connects the Golden Mean and the Fibonacci sequence to both the natural and visual world: with the language of mathematics.
 Certain proportions occur over and over again joining unity and diversity Herein lie richly illustrated pages with examples from plants, crafts, animals, Art: both ancient and modern, writing, the human body, music and more, all pointed toward a revelation of cosmic order so universal the author coined a new word for it Dinergy. “…Made up of two Greek words: dia — ‘across, through, opposite;’ and ‘energy.’”
A sample page.
 So this is why Acoma Pottery is so pleasing! (Hint: maybe) So what makes something beautiful? It’s surely not book learning and the methods of parsing, unweaving, reducing and dissecting! I don’t play around with numbers at all, I make art.
Rather, it’s about understanding that essential beauty’s out there, we’re all capable of perceiving it and here’s a Tiny Bit o’ Why. We may wildly disagree on specifics because there are many ways these patterns manifest.
Time, place, culture, narrative and materials don’t matter, yet there it is: A certainty of visual knowing instinctive and true.
I swear this knowing is how I sense when a work is done. There’s an out-breath, a hand relaxation, a satisfaction, all related to the cessation of seeking more for that piece. The rainbow is rewoven for now and I don’t need to measure it to make sure.
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