I popped into the newly opened “Rare Earth: National Ceramics Exhibition” currently open in the Cabrillo Gallery in Aptos today. And I got wowed! Without a lot of interpretive yak, I thought to simply share with you a smidge what I saw that was new and exciting. And I do mean smidge as there are another few visits-worth needed in order to let the great range of work percolate through.
Thank you Homer Simpson for the wisdom.
Certainly with clay one is trying at every stage in the learning and the making. Try as one might, however, the clay remembers it all, especially in the kiln. Cracking happens. Warpage appears. Or worse.
With failure, one learns to try differently. (Or moves on to something less fraught with it than ceramics?)
With application and repetition, one’s work becomes longer-considered, better designed, meticulously executed, lovingly cleaned-up, patiently dried, respectfully handled, thoughtfully decorated, slowly fired. And carefully assessed. Or not.
The pitfalls of the haphazard are hopefully mostly skirted. Yet, with new work, new hazards await, along with new unknown but certain failures.
Plus, with any keen observation and learning connected to one’s passion, standards rise, tolerations lower. Old successes are now designated failures.
It’s highly personal, but Perfection is not the goal either. There will always be pieces on a spectrum of better or worse.
If trying is (somewhat humorously) the first step towards failures amid the successes, so be it.
–Liz Crain, who was once told she was “being too hard on herself” (by a relatively sloppy potter in her opinion) when she did not allow cracked and obviously repaired work into her First Tier. She considers the “failures” in the photo up top evidence of her personal standards of excellence. She’s a QA Team of One. Some of those pieces may be corrected and/or re-fired, but then again knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em is part of this art as well and they may not be worth the time. After patching, grinding, staining, refiring, she may still have just been polishing turds and been better off starting afresh, letting the Failures be just that: a natural part of the trying.
A tantalizing shooting star of an exhibit titled Great American Mug Show: A Love Story opened yesterday. It’ll be up for less than two weeks, so make your plans if you’re in range.
Like a salivatin’ monkey at the Bananas Galore Shack, I had to go look, touch, desire and consume. I decided one Best Mug is an impossibility. One requires a whole wardrobe for all one’s unique drinking and vessel-acquiring needs. Here’s my fantasy collection from this show.
a whole bunch of Sculpture and Ceramics students made a large freeform mosaic bench. It took four years and I was ringmistress for the last two of them. After another two years it was installed in its permanent location in the new Art Quad at Cabrillo College. That was seven years ago as of this writing. It’s weathered a few winters, droughts, preschool field trips, freeform mime-dance performances and hundreds of lounging students. It’s a landmark and a meeting place. A sentinel and a touchstone. And, one day, a tile broke off…
The HOME Exhibit at the Pajaro Valley Arts Gallery has closed. After almost seven weeks away, my “Homefire 1957” incinerator piece is coming home.
When it’s in transit, I have learned to handle my work myself whenever possible. (Here’s one sad, sad example of why.) I figure if I break it, I am pre-forgiven. Others, they feel terrible all by themselves and I can’t assuage it! Consequently, I am glad for any nearby opportunities to show my stuff because I can deliver and pick up in person. If I have a driver, I hold pieces on my lap, but when I drive, I need to either fully pad and pack pieces in a lidded container or buckle them in thusly.
After one gets over the news that it smells bad, it looks like the odor of Outer Space is hard to pin down. It’s reportedly a bit like burnt metal, welding fumes and seared steak. Acrid but slightly sweet; sulphurous and undeniable. The astronauts’ suits and gear, upon returning from space walks, stunk like they’d been camping at a celestial tire fire. It was such an unlikely surprise.
But at one time so was the discovery that smoke from earthly tire fires, oil refineries, automobiles and backyard incinerators probably was to blame for the continually bad air.
Let’s take a walk together, just down the block and back. We can marvel at the sky moving behind the trees. Feel the songs sung by skywires.
In this third-of-three looks at individual works of art in the Pajaro Valley Arts HOME Exhibit, (links to all the others below) we have the pleasure of spending time with Maren Sinclair Hurn’s small porcelain wallpiece titled “Central Coast Summer.” It’s as brief and brilliant as a haiku. Evocative. A sassy statement about HOME without mentioning the house.