hot from the kiln

Porcelain candlestick holders.  10-12 inches tall.  Thrown on the potters wheel and assembled in sections, each piece is completely different from the next, while still maintaining a sense of unity in the set.

The colors and forms were so beautiful that I had a little fun on Instagram.

And, there is a matching stoneware set in green.

Handbuilt

I have finally made some more stoneware birds, these we made with lace.

These are a totally new idea, I made the textures with some glass items I found while thrift shopping over winter break.  I'm very excited that they turned out so well and differently from the lace and buttons that I have been using.

An Instagram bird conversation!

 As I continue to read, "Remembrance of Things Past," I have found another beautiful mention of an artist.  

"Today people of taste tell us that Renoir is a great eighteenth-century painter.  But when they say this they forget Time, and that it took a great deal of time, even in the middle of the nineteenth century for Renoir to be hailed as a great artist.  To gain this sort of recognition, an original painter or an original writer follows the path of the occultist. His painting for his pros acts upon us like a course of treatment that is not always agreeable. When it is over, the practitioner says to us, "Now look." And at this point the world (which was not created once and for all, but as often as an original artist is born) appears utterly different from the one we knew, but perfectly clear.  Women pass in the street, different from those we used to see, because they are Renoirs, the same Renoirs we once refused to see as women.  The carriages are also Renoirs, and the water, and the sky: we want to go for a walk in a forest like the one that, when we first saw it, was anything but a forest- more like a tapestry, for instance, with innumerable shades of color but lacking precisely the colors appropriate to forests. Such is the new and perishable universe that has just been created.  It will last until the next geological catastrophe unleashed by a new painter or writer with an original view of the world."  ~Proust (GW, Part II)

   After having experienced a work of art, the rest of the world does not look the same.  It is forever connected to the way the art has changed your view.
   I feel that this passage connects a bit with my candlestick holders.  To some, they may appear lopsided, the glaze has cracked, they are not all the same height.  To me, those are the very qualities that make them beautiful.

"Wabi-sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional...

It is also two separate words, with related but different meanings. "Wabi" is the kind of perfect beauty that is seemingly-paradoxically caused by just the right kind of imperfection, such as an asymmetry in a ceramic bowl which reflects the handmade craftsmanship, as opposed to another bowl which is perfect, but soul-less and machine-made.

"Sabi" is the kind of beauty that can come only with age, such as the patina on a very old bronze statue."  From http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WabiSabi   

  In short, what I learned in my Asian art history survey while at SAIC, is that Wabi is a 'perfect imperfection,' a 'beautiful mistake.' Since learning about this aesthetic in college, I have seen the world through a new lens.  It cannot be removed.  Why should I (the artist) make something that I (the thrifty shopper) could buy machine made from Target?  I wouldn't.  The trace of the artist's hand, for me, is essential.  Believe me too, striving for a perfect accident is not so easy!  They are forever falling over, cracking, coming apart.  In fact, since I took these photos yesterday, the two tallest white candlestick holders have cracked at the base.  I believe, due to the clear crackle glaze that I like so much.  As the french say, "C'est la vie."  No medium is so fickle as pottery, and yet that causes it to be one of the most rewarding for me when it turns out well.

10x8"  My new garbage can!  Not for sale, I'm keeping it.  I never knew a garbage can could cheer my day as much as this one does.  Of course, I intend to make a few more, and then I'll share :)