Time is on my side
oh yes it is! _The Rolling Stones. Time is so amazing in the life of a working potter. I felt for the past couple of months I've been spinning my wheels trying to do this and do that and getting nowhere. This past week I took a couple of weekends off from teaching to concentrate on making my work. I've had a great week in the studio and the pots are starting to show some mojo.
I want to show you one of my favourite pots in the Royal Ontario Museum. I took my class from Sheridan College School of Craft and Design to the archives in the basement to see pots that Toronto doesn't really want to see. They want to see gold plated, flowery decorative ware. My heart belongs in Medieval Europe. One of the biggest influences in my pottery career was Mick Casson who introduced me to Medieval pots. It's not a stretch to see their influence in his work and mine.
So here is one of my jugs. Maybe a little more finess, a bit more refined but I hope offering the same kind of raw energy the Med shows. Damn I love that pot. My hands trembled when I got to hold it.
If there is a lesson for me in the pots of that time is the "directness, the no fuss, no muss and playful use of clay. No scrubbies or sponges ever touched those pots.
When in Wales I was enamoured by the bread bins of Richard Batterham. Here are some of my jars that aren't as traditional as Batterhams. I did have him peering over my shoulder while making them. He may have sneered at the North American no tap root tradition.
Handles are kinda my thang, y'all.
Here is a double. The secret to great handles is to be like a medieval craftsperson. Do it like ya mean it. Get it on and get on with it. No scrubbies, no sponges.
I am grateful to have travelled the world and worked with so many amazing potters and students well on their way to being amazing.
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Comments
The numbers are sobering. Forty years of monitoring data tells us that Ontario’s six swallow species have lost more than half their populations in Canada.
https://naturecanada.ca/defend-nature/how-you-help-us-take-action/save-our-swallows/
JMWT
Now, this might sound like a sinful advice.
All of creation is nothing more than the combination of the existing, in newer ways. It is not so much about adding new elements as much about forming new combination of the existing.
Since creativity is that of new combinations, innovation starts with imitation. In the pursuit of being entirely new, one often misses out on the virtues of the existing solutions, and while reinventing the wheel, you lose out on the precious time. Is it better off looking out for the existing and building on the top of it, versus creating something entirely from scratch.
Newton very famously noted, ‘if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulder of giants’. You should learn to stand on the shoulders of giants, including your predecessors and competitors. But don’t stop there. Innovation has to follow imitation. If you can imitate somebody, the third person can do the same for you, and so on. Hence, you need to top up your imitation with innovation in, at least, some aspect of your work.
To sum up, let’s lower the bar of starting off by looking outwards, and then inwards, which is to imitate before you innovate.
PS
Meanwhile, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion that would so severely limit Congress’s power to legislate. Thomas lays out in his Sackett concurrence, the federal ban on child labor is unconstitutional. So is the minimum wage, federal laws protecting the right to unionize, bans on workplace discrimination, and nearly all other regulation of the workplace. Thomas (and Gorsuch, who joined his opinion) striking down a law that prohibited goods produced by child laborers from being sold in US markets, and their views tend to shape the ideas of lawyers and judges throughout the legal system.
It is worth emphasizing that, at least for the moment, only two of the Supreme Court’s nine members have signed onto this plan. There is probably little risk that Thomas and Gorsuch will get their way anytime soon — although it is also worth emphasizing that former President Donald Trump got to appoint three Supreme Court justices during his single term in office, so the Court’s center of gravity can lurch sharply to the right in a very short period of time.
Ian M.
We appreciate your leadership in securing a Global Oceans Treaty that creates a path to protecting 30 percent of our oceans by 2030. Winning the treaty was truly a historic moment, one of the greatest environmental achievements in history. Now we need your help to protect the planet from plastic pollution and lowering carbon emissions by supporting a strong Global Plastics Treaty.
At the end of May, delegates from around the world will convene in Paris for the second round of negotiations on a Global Plastics Treaty. While you have signaled support for this treaty, the US position is not yet strong enough. Currently, the US is not calling for a cap on plastic production – which is the only real way to stop plastic pollution. In 2021, the US only recycled a mere 5 percent of plastics produced. We will never be able to recycle our way out of the plastic pollution crisis we’ve created – this treaty must cap plastic production or it will not be successful. Similarly, the US must advocate for a legally binding treaty – not one that relies on countries to come up with their own plans for dealing with plastic waste. We’ve watched this method play out with the Paris Climate Agreement and to our extreme disappointment, it has not achieved a significant decrease in carbon dioxide emissions. You have the opportunity to do things differently this time around, and ensure a treaty that will have real impacts for frontline communities suffering the impacts of plastic pollution–and for the stability of the global climate upon which all life on Earth relies.
Plastics are polluting and harmful at every stage of their life cycle – from extraction to disposal. 99% of plastics come from fossil fuels; cutting plastic production will make a significant dent in carbon emissions. There are communities living next to refineries and petrochemical facilities who are bearing the combined brunt of the climate and plastic crises. People living near these facilities–overwhelmingly people of color–face higher rates of cancer, asthma, and adverse birth outcomes. No human life is disposable and their lives cannot continue to be harmed for the sake of unnecessary plastics. The recent chemical disasters in East Palestine, Ohio and Bucks County, Pennsylvania provide further evidence of why our continued reliance on plastics are harming our health and communities.
President Biden, you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help our climate, our oceans, and our communities this year by supporting a strong and ambitious Global Plastics Treaty. Recent polling shows that most voters are concerned about plastic pollution and its impact on our oceans and environment. We know you care about this issue and we were encouraged to see the initial steps you took in March by setting a goal to replace 90 percent of plastics with biomaterials, but this is not a real, lasting solution. Focusing on bioplastics and recycling would not address the root cause of the plastic pollution problem: we need to stop producing single-use plastics and switch to refill and reuse systems.
The decision you make on this critical issue will help define your legacy – will you be the President who helped put an end to the plastic pollution crisis, or someone who let it spiral further out of control? We’re calling on you to do the right thing.
https://chubstr.com/
Roger