Picking the fly shit outta the pepper.

I made some plates yesterday using some coloured slips and my thick slip application. I love slip application because it is immediate, tactile and shows the casualness of the process. I remember spending a firing at the late Ruth Gowdy McKInley’s and her showing me one of her favourite pots. Ruth was probably the tightest most impeccable potter on this earth but the pot she loved was by John Reeves. It was a porcelain vase unevenly trimmed, kinda heavy and lop sided. Why did she love this pot was my thought?   As a young beginner I thought light and machine finish precision was what I should aim for. As with most beginners I was busy picking the fly shit out of the pepper. In other words I was concentrating so much on the minutiae that I was missing the beauty and life in that pot. Many are taught that they should arm their studios with a janitor’s closet full of sponges, scrubbies,sandpapers of all grades  and cleaning paraphernalia to absolutely erase all evidence of the maker’s marks. They never see the forest for the trees. Some see only the trees while others see a landscape.

I write this blog like I make pots. I think about it during the day or in my sleep and then I write it. Bam, done in ten minutes or less. Yes, there are grammar and sentence structure mistakes but I hope it is alive, personal and maybe makes you wonder why does he love this pot, this process, this life? Some would take all morning to write a blog post. I just swallow the pepper and can’t tell the difference. I find pepper rather tasty actually!