happy new year yay hooray

I usually do The Week of Reflection between Christmas and New Year's, a favorite stretch of time for me, but this year I just wasn't up for it. I spent most of December so depressed I could barely get out of bed. (Remember when I said I was going to clean up the studio? LOL ALL DAY that did not happen)

Depression is familiar to me, but it's been many years since I suffered a major bout. I think it was triggered by the loss of my cat Noodle, which brought on reflection which turned into ruminating. Noodle was 18 years old. I looked back on her life with us, and I remembered my life when I found her, and things have improved for me in 18 years, but not all that much. Many things have gotten harder. 

Some of my drear arises from the state of the country. I have always wanted clay to be an arena where we can just be neighbors and see the good in each other, so I try to be minimally political here, but no reasonable person can say things are going well for American democracy. There are many people far more painfully affected than I am, so I have no right to personally complain, but it grieves me to see suffering & injustice & to be able to do so little to help. I do what I can, but we have collectively failed so many people; we aren't going to get those lives back. This weighs on me. 

In my individual life, nothing major has changed, but I did have a sort of epiphany: things are not going to get easier. Things are never going to get easier. I think I always subconsciously believed that someday, if I worked hard, I would reach a point where I wasn't struggling financially, when there would be enough time to relax, but guess what? I did the math, and there is no relief in sight. While I never intend to retire from making pots - not until I am physically unable - I thought I would be able to dial back on my classes, because while I enjoy teaching, it's mentally very taxing on me, and starting to be physically hard, too. I thought I'd be able to cut down to 2 or 3 classes a week somewhere between 62 & 65, but that is just not going to be possible; I'm going to have to teach 6 classes a week until I'm 70. I'm so tired now, at 61, that I can't imagine how I'm going to feel nine years from now. 

I guess the big change happened in 2024, although I did not recognize it at the time. Doug's health has grown more frail, and he is unfortunately in the difficult space between too disabled to work but not quite disabled enough to collect disability. He can take care of himself - there's no physical burden on me - but I have to carry the whole household financially. I am grateful that I am able to do that (barely) but it doesn't leave time for much else. 

My efforts to create an income stream in less physically demanding ways have not been very successful, which leads me to spiral that I am just mid at everything I try. (Except making pots, which pays me like $7/hr, or teaching pottery, which I love but which exhausts me.) I suck & I deserve to fail. That's my shitty brain chemistry talking, I know, but since my brain is where I live it feels very real. 

Today is the first day in a long time that I've been able to get up out of bed without a specific reason to do so. Hoping hard that it is a sign of better things on the horizon. Is now a good time to say, Happy New Year?

Thanks for reading this far. Sorry to be a bummer, hopefully the next time I post things will be better. 

I love you and miss you, Noodle. 

Pottery & History: The Earliest Evidence of Mathematical Thought

 

The craft of pottery ties us to our history, in part because the material is so durable. Pieces of the objects themselves survive, giving us clues as to the lives of the people who made them.

Much of prehistoric pottery, if it contains images at all, features images of animals or humans, reflecting the interests of the culture that produced it. A recent article in Science Daily reveals that Halafian pottery, from the Mesopotamian region in the era from 6100 B.C. to 5100 B.C., produced the earliest known botanical images on ware. This is of particular interest to me, as botanical imagery is sort of a specialty of mine! In Halafian ceramics, flowers, seedlings, shrubs, and branches are depicted but interestingly no edible plants, suggesting the images were purely aesthetic, rather than conveying information about agriculture or food gathering. The floral images were arranged in precise geometric patterns, indicating the makers engaged in mathematical thinking long before any known numerals or mathematical writings. The images are spaced evenly across the surfaces, and some floral images have petals arranged in mathematical sequences: 4, 8, 16, 32.

Math, science, history, unraveling the mystery! Or, if you prefer: prehistoric people! they were just like us.

Break Time!

I have most of the month of December off from teaching my classes at Portland Pottery. It's great, and it's not; I don't get paid, & I miss my students, but, you know, free time! Every year, I think I am going to get SO much done on my break. Every year the first week is spent preparing for holiday shows & delivering ware, & the second is spent...well, I believe the kids call it "bed rotting." 

Not entirely, of course; I still do laundry & dishes, and other basic household stuff; I still take my mom grocery shopping. I even still do my (admittedly pretty minimal) morning workout, I still cook. What I don't do? Go into the studio. Like, at all, that whole week. Which is weird because in the lead up to the break, I spend a lot of time thinking about all the stuff I want to make! But I can't seem to do it. My studio is in the same disorderly state I left it in at the end of the glazing marathon for the last firing. 

That all changes today! The 2nd week of my four-week break ended yesterday, and while I do still have some holiday stuff to do, I think my brain has had its needed hiatus. 

Merry Christmas, Bigfoot

 Yesterday was my friend's annual Christmas Cookie Decorating party. This is right in my wheelhouse, as royal icing cookies are a hobby of mine. I bring cookies & frosting & tools - though of course she has all of that stuff - and, because I'd rather end up with 10 good cookies than 30 half-assed cookies, I pick a theme & go about decorating a few, slowly & carefully. 

I usually prefer non-traditional cookie images; trees & Santas are fine & cute & I do make a few of them! But it's fun to reach for something that people will recognize as seasonal that they haven't seen a million times. This year I got quite interested in this thru-the-window idea:

Yes, that's Bigfoot! this one is my favorite. 

Some things I would do differently: stiffer frosting for the window frames; draw the smaller details - the cardinals, etc - with cookie markers instead of a paint brush; be more careful with the background icing; small tip for the Christmas lights around the window. 

Anyway! It's the time of year that i catch up on all the stuff I didn't do the rest of the year, since my last sales event is over, no more parties to attend. I don't know if I'm going to do an "official" batch of cookies this year but if I do I'm leaning towards more window scenes. 

Merry, happy, jolly - whatever works for you, I hope your season is bright. XO L

Kiln is Loaded!

I was hoping I'd have enough pots to fire this week & then again next week; as usual I am surprised by the capacity of this kiln. But that's a good thing. 
Anyway, all loaded, but when I will fire it depends on the weather. Not the way you might think! Wind or extreme cold can affect the firing, but a little snow won't matter at all. In fact, it's only if it snows on Tuesday that I will be able to fire on Tuesday. I've become kind of a little old lady about driving in snow - went off the road one too many times - so if we get the predicted 6", I will not be driving to Portland to teach my Tuesday classes. Sorry gang! But if I'm not teaching I might as well be firing. 

So, if there's snow on Tuesday, we'll be unloading Thursday; if not, I'll fire Friday & unload Sunday. Join my Patreon page for first dibs on pots! 
 

Merry Potter and the Cursed...Whatever This Is

Though I am mostly a functional potter, I occasionally make little animals - mainly cats, bears, and rabbits - and I do teach a handbuilding class at Portland Pottery. A student asked me to show the class how to make a monkey! Well, I'm game, but I never made a monkey before.

With the little animals, I'm always walking a line between literality and whimsey. They are all intended to be somewhat comical, which I achieve by exaggerating certain proportions, but I need to get enough right to communicate what animal I had in mind. The face is especially important here! Which brings me to my latest effort. All it needs is a pair of cymbals to be the eponymous character of the famous Stephen King story. 

There are a lot of thing I got right about this monkey, and some I would do differently - for example, on a future attempt, I would make the hands solid & carve the fingers. What really jumps out though - almost literally! - are the eyes. Monkeys, unlike, say rabbits, have inset eyes, like people do. I used a tool to make the indents, then added flattened balls of clay, resulting in the zombie stare. This critter looks like it would come alive & kill you in your sleep! On a future piece I would make the eyes smaller, & the sockets deeper. 
Believe me, I'm not dumping on myself here; the first one of anything I make is never the best one, and figuring out new pieces is a world of fun (& partly why I teach classes!) If you can't laugh when things go wrong, clay will kick your ass. 
I'm going to fire it, anyway; it's possible that surface treatment will mitigate some of the cursed qualities of this object, and anyway I'm starting to feel some affection for my little murder-monkey. Stay tuned for that result! 

In the French Tradition

 

In fashionable households in 18th century France, it was common to see serving dishes made to appear like whatever they were meant to serve: asparagus soup in a tureen shaped like a bundle of asparagus; chicken casserole in a hen-shaped vessel.

Though the term used for these is trompe l'oeil, which means "fool the eye", these were unlikely to fool anyone (unlike the actual trompe l'oeil ceramics of, say Marilyn Levine or Paul Dresang.) The French vessels were more like visual jokes, all the funnier if the food within were completely different from what the exterior led one to believe. A sweet custard in a fish-shaped tureen? Hilarious! [Read more...]

Spraying the Soda

 I get a lot of questions about how soda firing works. It's pretty simple, really: when the kiln reaches ^9, I spray a mixture of baking soda, washing soda, and water through ports built into the kiln wall for that purpose. The sodium in those compounds turns into a glaze on the ware (and everything else in the kiln.) I use draw rings - little loops of clay - to determine when I have sprayed enough soda into the kiln. Pulling the draw ring out through the spyhole is my favorite part of the process! Well, except for unloading. 

Check out the whole video (free!) for members at my Patreon page. (You can buy the post for $3 if you prefer, but it's free to become a member. )

Surprise Butter Dishes

So, you might have noticed that I'm a goofball. I used to try to pretend I'm not, that I am in fact a very serious artiste making very serious art, which you must take very seriously. Then I figured out that everyone is a goofball of one stripe or another.

Anyway, today's goofiness is: when I went out to grind kiln shelves (UGH) to be ready for the next firing, in the shed I discovered not one but two butter dishes I had forgotten existed from the last firing! Surprise!
Eventually I will take better photographs & list them in the shop, unless...one of you would like one? They're $60 ($54 for paid Patreon subscribers!), which includes shipping in the continental US. I was quite pleased with the toasty, speckly color. Butter dishes always go pretty fast, because I don't make many of them, so if you've been waiting, here's your chance. 🙂 Shoot me an email - info@finemesspottery.com - & I'll send you an invoice, or we can do Venmo.

October Shop Update!

I unloaded a great firing last week, so I'm super excited to update the shop this time. I've got mugs & sippers, a serving bowls & ikebana, even a coffee cone. Check out the new work at this link! If you see something you'd like to buy, consider subscribing to my Patreon at the Water tier - that comes with a coupon code for 10% off! 

Raku Season Winding Down

 

Technically, of course, there's no reason why raku season has to wind down; You can raku all winter, if you want. I don't want! I'm sort of a recreational raku firer, so it's fair weather or nothing for me. 

This firing was a little...interesting! There was barely enough propane, and no combustibles, but luckily one of the participants lives nearby & had a big bag of pine shavings in her garage - she keeps chickens. We also had three pieces stick to the kiln shelves, which is a thing that has never happened to me before. 

Otherwise a nice firing, though. I only had one piece in it, glazed with Laguna's Tutti Fruiti. 

It's vastly different - and better! - than the test tile at the link. That's raku for ya. 
 

So, that was last night. I spent today grinding, pricing,  packing pots as I sorted them for their various destinations. Hoping to have a shop update by Wednesday of next week; subscribe to my Patreon to get first access (& a discount code) when that happens. 
Thanks for reading! 

Before & After

 Just because I haven't done one in a while, and this was an especially nice firing. Note to self: 500 grams soda ash, 600 grams baking soda, 2 gallons of water. Three rounds of spray. (I did have quite a lot of solution left.)

These aren't the only variables, of course, but they are important ones. 

Today & the rest of the week will be grinding, sorting, pricing, packing, & delivery. Next week I'll photograph pots for the online shop & get those listed. Patreon subscribers at the Water tier & up get first access & discount codes! If you're shopping, the discount alone might pay for your subscription. 😊😊😊