April 26

I glazed today and got the kiln totally loaded!  So on Monday I just have to turn it on and then I’m good to go.  And I’ll be able to unload it on Tuesday afternoon.  The plates and cups and the platter all made it in, but there wasn’t enough room for the two serving bowls and the teapot. 

            My six teacups and my serving dish are going to get bisqued soon, and then I’ll be able to glaze them and get the rest of the stuff into a high temp firing.

            There’s a person named Chris who has been sitting on some of the ceramics classes because he’s becoming an art teacher, and he interviewed me today about my project for a presentation that he’s doing.  I talked about how you can kind of find yourself in pottery because the way things look really relate to the way the person who made it looks, and the way they think and feel and touch.  I feel like everything is kind of a self-portrait in that way.

            My project is about self-portraiture, and also about the juxtaposition of a simple piece of porcelain dinnerware with the kind of nonsensical blind contour drawing.  It’s almost funny, if you think about it, because porcelain is classically really carefully and methodically decorated, with little details that are really intentionally placed, and the blind contours are just the opposite of that.  They just go where they want to go and do what they want to do.  And as the artist you don’t really have much control over them, even though you’re creating them.  I think they’re so expressive and they really capture the emotion of the creator.  If you’re sleepy a blind contour looks different than it would if you were angry.  So I’ve tried to find ways to immortalize them, like embroidering and glazing.  I just like to let them be what they are.  And classically, the design on a plate would reflect the surface of the plate, but I just let the drawing be what they are and let them be unconfined by the structure of the piece.  If a drawing needs to slip into the inside of a cup to be finished, then I just let it and I don’t try to rescale it.  I just slap it on there and let it do it’s own thing. Self-portraiture is really about process and seeing yourself for what you are, and not trying to change anything so that it fits.