A PICTURE TAKEN

There is a pottery collector that I know who takes wonderful photographs of places he has been and things that capture his attention and eye. Though I am far less traveled than he, I have been to quite a few places but many or most without a camera or predating the digital revolution. In taking many of the detail shots of pots that come my way, I find that sometimes these pictures remind me of times and places in those travels, snow covered mountains while snowshoeing and even ice climbing, hikes, visits to famous monuments and places and in the case of this photo, the last ditch attempt for the lake ice to hold out under the intense scrutiny of the oncoming spring sun.

 

This detail is of the interior of a Kumano Kuroemon guinomi, areas of built up ash have turned to glass that have been affected by the Kuma-Shino that served as a base coat to what havoc the firing would bring. I am reminded of the wet and fragile ice that covers the melting ice on Lake Champlain every day until it finally succumbs to a new season, everyday more ice melts and when the temperatures dip down below freezing the top, slushy layer once again becomes ice. Like in this photo, the ice is distinct and come daybreak, it becomes increasing wet until it is just a layer of water on up to two feet of ice underneath. Every detail photo has the possibility to evoke these memories and associations, unique to each viewer, these keshiki landscapes unlock the imaginary and distant landscapes of our memory and there are those that insist, "it's only clay!"

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.