This
is just a quick picture of a blank canvas, an unadorned pot, I made this
teabowl as a test and need it bone dry before I can proceed. When I was looking
at this bowl, just after tooling the foot I was reminded of a workshop I taught
quite a while back where I was asked by a participant who did not throw* if I
could make her one of my teabowls so that she could decorate it. Since the
workshop revolved around testing surfaces, I had a dozen teabowls made as
"blanks", tooled one and gave it to her but it was the next part that
really has stuck with me all these years later. She asked, "what should I
do with it now?" and without really giving it any thought I simple
responded, the possibilities are endless and it was at that moment that I
concluded that was the most honest thing I have ever stated regarding pottery.
If you take even one minute to look around the internet, what do you see? We
live in an age where everyone who works in clay has not only a different
approach and surface but luckily many show off the endless possibilities over
the web. Though much of my work revolves around styles that I have been working
with for most of my pottery career, every time I test and try out new ideas I
realize, if I had ten lifetimes that it is still quite likely that the
possibilities will continue to be endless and that suits me just fine.
(*FWIW I
offered to teach her to throw as the "give a person a fish, teach a person
to fish parable sprung to mind but after 40+ years of making pottery, she was
just not interested.)
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