identity change

Things are changing around here. For starters, this week I started my first teaching gig at Berkeley Potters Studio. It's just one night a week, an intermediate to advanced throwing class, but for me it's a big deal.

I've been asked on and off over the years to teach, and for the most part I have resisted. Many reasons, the most important one being that I spend all of my working hours making my own stuff, and I don't want anything getting in the way of that. One of my greatest pleasures in life is having complete control over my own schedule. The whole time I was a kid, I just could not wait to get out from under the tyranny of an imposed schedule. As an adult, I'm a bit protective over maintaining that control.

There are other reasons, and this one I'm a bit sheepish to admit, but here it is: the fact that I have been able to make a decent living as an artist for 20 straight years is a huge part of my identity. I'm proud that I can do this, and I have some ego wrapped up in it too. Let's say... a lot of ego.

Being attached to an idea of my own artist identity is something I've been breaking down, a process that probably started after my mom died. There are many scraps of enlightenment and self-knowledge that come from this, not all of them easy or pleasant.

One of the uneasy facts is that I am starting to get tired, and perhaps a little bored with this way of life. I still love making pottery and I am not at all tired of that, if anything I am more obsessed than ever. But depending on it for the sole source of my income is a cycle-- constantly renewing, always repeating, and never-ending. And almost all of my creativity is fire-hosed into this endeavor. And I wonder if there are other things I could do that wouldn't take up almost every ounce of my lifeblood.
And also, give me a different challenge.

The thought of being something other than a solely self-supporting artist has brought up feelings of diminishment and a loss of self-worth, and I'm asking myself: why? It's all about how I want to see myself, and how I want other people to see me. Being an artist means being something of an outsider to the rest of society, and I like that. I have a lot of identity wrapped up in it.

But all of that is also just a story, and the ego loves telling us a good story about who we are. Because as much as I would like to see myself as someone living on the edge, I could also be seen as a servant to capitalism and a slave to social media in my daily hustle to get the pots out of my studio and into people's homes. Was that the dream? And that too is just a story.

I'm moving through all of these feelings toward something different for my life. There is going to be more teaching, there may be a thing called "paychecks", and a new business may be coming out of all of this. I'll keep everyone who is interested in the loop, right here.

Marcee Stiltner 1948-2017

My mom died two months ago. She suddenly got very sick in mid-January, and was quickly re-diagnosed with the cancer she had managed to fight off for a couple of good years. Only it had spread to all the places you don't want cancer to spread to. The plane ticket she bought for me to fly to DC so I could go the Women's March was changed into a last minute ticket up to Olympia, where I spent almost two weeks by her side with my younger sister. She died at home in hospice care, which is where I hear most people want to die, but very few actually do.

My mom refused further treatment for her cancer, a decision she was completely clear on and my sister and I had both been prepared for long before. My mom believed in quality of life. She was a mental health advocate her entire professional life which informed her choices about a lot of things and shaped her character. For her, getting treatment that may extend her life by a few months while at the same time making her so sick that she would not be able to work and enjoy her family wasn't even a choice. It was amazing how long it took her oncologist to understand that. He had all kinds of life-extending plans for her. She wasn't having any of it. And she didn't. She died quickly, which many have told me is a mercy, but I can tell you is just a total shock to the system.

My sister and I took several weeks to clean out my mom's house, with help from friends and family. Our mom's actual living quarters were pretty easy to deal with-- aside from that peculiarly American habit of buying paper goods in extreme bulk and her obsession with office supplies, my mom was not a collector or hoarder of things. She was very neat and organized by habit, with contained areas of chaos, mostly isolated in a junk drawer or a laundry room cabinet. While I was growing up we moved so many times to follow her career that I think it gave everyone in my family an allergy to tchotchkes. She did have a lot of jewelry which I was moved to meticulously collect in 3-inch plastic baggies, one baggie for each item and pair, and store in a bin. The jewelry is not valuable nor to my taste, but I can't give it away. Not yet.

It was my mom's sewing studio that tripped us up. My mom was a self-taught master seamstress. She has sewn since she was a teenager and she has always sewn, no matter what, no matter how busy or overwhelmed with work or raising kids on her own. I remember a period of time when I was in elementary school and she was briefly unemployed, and I often came home in the afternoon to find her sewing.  Next to reading, it was her main hobby in life and she never got bored with it.

The home she has owned for the last 15 years has a large basement where she finally had the dream sewing studio she always wanted. She had four sewing machines: a regular machine that most seamstresses have, a serger machine, a quilting machine, and an embroidery machine. She had a professional iron that I barely knew how to turn on, and a custom made ironing board that was longer and wider than a regular board. She had a cutting table that dominated the space, with a huge cutting mat so you could line up your fabric perfectly. One wall was lined with racks that held thread of every color. The opposite wall was lined with shelving that held over a dozen bins of fabric, ordered by type, color, and print. Other bins that held scores of zippers of every length and color. More bins that held sewing notions. Even more bins that held stuff for fun sewing projects. One giant bin of just patterns. My mom was an early adopter of the internet (she was the first person I knew to install Prodigy and start surfing the web) and was always trolling online looking for the latest sewing gadgets and tools, and those gadgets and tools were everywhere in her studio. I can't even begin to list them all.

My mom made everything, all the clothes she wore, down to her own tailored slips, for most of her adult life. Women and men always asked where she got her clothes, and she loved telling people that she made them herself. She was a professional woman through most of her career and made the most beautiful suits: tailored jackets, skirts, pants, blouses.  She copied the first designer jeans in the 80's, making her own Calvin Klein's that looked exactly like the real thing, missing only the Calvin Klein label.  She made her own t-shirts and shorts. She sewed her own bathing suits. When jogging became a thing she sewed up her own jogging outfit and actually jogged 3 or 4 times. She made a floor length fur coat made from fake fur and took shit from people on street who thought it was real.  In my closet I have an exact copy of a Chanel jacket she made, down to the quilted lining and gold chain that runs around the inside hem. It is a work of art, yet my mom never thought she was an artist or even particularly creative. She just like to sew. A lot.

My mom once rented a RV with one of her friends and they drove to a national park where they sewed all day in beautiful surroundings. She was a little bit crazy when it came to sewing.

Later, she started making other things: quilts, wall hangings, curtains, toiletry bags, throw pillows, oven mitts, purses, wallets. Slippers. Cell phone covers. Laptop bags. When she got her embroidery machine she would sew something up and then embroider it. When she got her quilting machine she would sew, quilt, and embroider. When she was diagnosed with cancer the first time she made bunch of cute hats in anticipation of losing her hair during chemo, and then she didn't lose any hair and gave them all away.  She made ridiculous things too: she created an item she called a "charger cozy"-- a colorful sleeve that slipped over a cell phone cord so it would be more difficult to leave behind when you were traveling. She had little interest in buying anything that could be made. Sewing was more fun than shopping.

My mom mostly liked to sew for herself, and for me and my sister, and she liked making gifts for friends. She had no enthusiasm in doing it for money. She tried a couple of times but she said it took the fun right out of it. She made me a dress for Pioneer Day when I was 7 with a matching bonnet that I continued to wear for everyday attire. I loved that outfit, especially the bonnet, and refused to take off even for a formal portrait with my sister, which led to a huge throw down in the portrait studio (I won). She made the dresses that we wore to dances in high school. She made the dresses that we wore to our college graduations. She made my wedding dress and my sister's bridesmaid dress and of course, her own mother-of-the-bride dress. She made the aprons I wear to work every day. She sent me sheets embroidered with mine and my husband's name along the top. She made me a silk "sleep sack" so I would not have to be tortured by low thread count sheets when I travel, a personality quirk of mine she thought showed a specific weakness of character, but made me a sleep sack nonetheless. (It's not that I have such refined taste, I just have very sensitive skin.)

My mom taught me how to sew in a two week marathon of sewing at her house when I was about 21.  Up until that time I had no interest in sewing. My sister and I grew up trying to entertain ourselves in fabric shops, and I can tell you there is very little that is entertaining in a fabric shop unless you want to buy fabric. My mom and I did sewing marathons almost every time we got together for a visit, and she did the same thing with my sister. It was a great way to spend time together: my mom would fix all of my mistakes and I had new clothes at the end of it.

There was a period of time where I was making all of my clothes too, but I lacked the meticulous skill my mom brought to sewing. I liked to take shortcuts, skip reading the directions, fudge on steps. I didn't have patience. I started sewing again in the past couple of years, and finally my mom's lessons came through: take your time, do it right. I will never be as obsessed as she was with sewing, I have my own obsessions to tend to, but I enjoy the process now in a way I didn't before.

In recent years as rhuemetoid arthritis started causing pain in her hands she slowed down with sewing and started wearing store bought clothes more often, which always profoundly disturbed me. It was a small sign that she had to give up something she loved. And it was just a slight loss of dignity, of being forced to flip through racks for mass-produced clothing like the rest of us. As I've watched people age, I've realized that everything you love becomes everything you eventually lose, sometimes slowly, sometimes more quickly. Trying to hold on to your dignity through this process  is one of the most difficult things of all.

Cleaning out her sewing space seemed like an insurmountable task. There were days where I couldn't even go down there because it was so overwhelming. It was like a fabric bomb had gone off. My mom gave us permission to throw away every item in her home, except for the poetry she wrote (she's written poetry since she was a child), which she wanted my sister and I to keep. While I had little problem boxing up most of her home for Goodwill, her sewing stuff was another thing. My sister and I divided up the machines and some gadgets, her best friend hauled off a lion's share of fabric and supplies, and that still left a ton of stuff. We felt it all needed to go to people who would appreciate it, not a scrap would go to Goodwill. And we did it, down to the last box filled with cotton quilting fabric and quilting books which went to a quilter friend. We probably could have headed home two weeks earlier if not for the sewing studio.

I can write about my mother for a very long time. I was a terrible, terrible teenager, to the point where my mom kicked me out for a while because I refused to go to a drug rehab (I didn't need it, not really), but even during those times I always loved her, always felt loved by her, and always knew I could count on her. I know many people are not as lucky as I was with my mom. I have always been able to take her unconditional love and support for granted. She has helped me through every difficult period in my life, never telling me what to do, but helping me figure it out. She knew everything about me, I stopped keeping secrets from her once I moved out of the house at 17. She never judged me. Or if she did she kept it absolutely to herself.

My mom had many stellar qualities, but her ability to help me and my sister prepare for her death and talk about it openly was one of the last amazing things she did for us. My sister and I wondered if we were too open with her about our anxiety about taking care of her at the end of her life; my sister could get paid family leave for 3 months but I would have to improvise. We were semi-panicked at the idea that she would be in hospice beyond our ability to personally care for her, dreaded the idea of draining her account or having to sell her house to continue her care. But she kept telling us she wouldn't last more than a week, even though she was talking and laughing with her friends and making jokes, so we didn't take her totally seriously. But she was right. We brought her home for hospice on a Wednesday, and she died on the following Sunday.

My mom did a lot for me, but unfortunately she could not prepare me for what life now feels like without her. There is no wrapping your head around that until it actually happens. People who have been through it tell me it gets better, but I don't know what that looks or feels like, I just try to hold on to the idea that I might one day feel better. I try to be grateful that I had two weeks with her before she died, but she was only 69 and I wish I could have had another 20 years.

You can read her obituary here.

slow ceramics

It's been an unusual holiday season for me, in that it has been remarkably slow. This has been by design. Of course I love the holiday bump and the attendant swelling of my bank account. What I don't love is the pressure cooker of holiday shopping, the timeline of trying to get handmade items to people by Christmas or Santa will explode and ruin every one's day.

I decided not to do any shows at all this year, with the exception of my own Open Studio and a pop-up I'm doing with friends. And I also decided that I would not participate in any Black Friday or Cyber Monday promotions by offering free shipping or other discounts. All those things do is create a bunch of extra work for myself, at a discount. One could argue that the value of these promotions is reaching new customers, and even though you are not making as much money per item, you are making it in bulk, which disguises the net loss.

But I oppose it on a philosophical level. Black Friday is nothing more than a media invention designed to panic people into spending money, and it has always disgusted me. I don't see why artists and makers should be participating in it when what we are offering is the very opposite of that kind of mindset. I just can't handle the dissonance of it anymore, and this is the year where I checked out. Cyber Monday, while not as gross on the face of it since it doesn't involve people getting squished to death in a Wal-Mart toy aisle, is still of the same ilk, designed to concentrate purchases on a single day to measure consumer spending.

I did have a sale on my own website, which I figured would reach my current customers and fans who keep an eye on what I do. Those are the people I want to reach, give a discount to. My customers are the ones who keep my business going all year. I don't have a business that needs bulk holiday sales to see me through the year, and I don't see why I should be selling discounted work to what usually amounts to a bunch of one-time customers.

All of this high-minded thinking has created the slowest holiday season I've ever had, which has given me moments of pause, but I feel like it's totally worth it. I've not worked any weekends, broken down into stress tears, or had unpleasant email exchanges with people who don't understand the term "made-to-order." I've been able to create an oasis of calm in my studio, to actually enjoy the season as we head toward the darkest day of the year.

And I'm creating a whole new body of work right now, and I'm completely immersed in it. The holidays are a side note to me compared to what I'm doing in the studio. The work is crazy labor intensive, taking hours and even days to produce a piece, which is the polar opposite of what I've been doing for years with running a production pottery.  It's slow ceramics, slow making, and I am loving it. The pleasure is so deep, and it's a pleasure I have not experienced in years. Because I also love selling my work-- a lot of it--I will probably figure out how to put some of these pieces into production and make them more widely available, but for now, I just want to ride this wave.

the problem with perfection

When people tell me they are a perfectionist, I take note. I am a recovering perfectionist and I’m interested in what being a perfectionist means to other people.  I generally regard perfectionism as a neurotic condition and I want to offer support, if possible, and learn more about letting go of perfectionism within myself.

Often people will say they are perfectionists with a little bit of pride. Proclaiming yourself a perfectionist is a sort of humble brag, because you are subtly sending the message that your standards are high, higher than most. And if your standards are higher than most then your work is probably better than most… right?

I’ve struggled with my own perfectionism because I believe my desire to be perfect and make perfect things has held me back from being a fully realized artist more than any other one of my tendencies. For me, being a perfectionist means rarely deriving satisfaction from the work I make because it’s not as good as I want it to be. That striving to be better is a trait of many artists, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with seeing how the work you just made would be even better if you did “x” differently. It’s called innovation and it’s how you get from A to Z and make amazing work. Amazing work doesn’t just come out of nowhere. Amazing work comes from lots of small failures and having the tenacity and drive to overcome each small failure. The problem with perfectionism is failure is often regarded not as a step forward, but as a sinkhole.

My studio is filled with half-realized ideas that did not come out as planned, so I drop it. My head is filled with ideas I’ve never tried because my perfectionistic fear-monger picks it apart before I give myself a chance to experiment. I started recognizing this tendency a while ago, and I’ve taken steps to recognize the voice of perfection, and dismiss it.  That voice disguises itself as a helpful friend who just wants you to make good work, and it's easy to confuse it with your intuition.

Given all the time I’ve spent thinking about perfectionism and trying to track it within myself and other people, I have some more ideas about the drawbacks of being a perfectionist:

1. Being a perfectionist is just not fun, because you are more focused on controlling the outcome rather than focusing on the process. As an artist or creator of any kind, you gotta love process, because to make anything takes time and attention to take each step toward completion. If you lose your way with that and focus too much on how it's not perfect before you are even done, you've crushed your own creative joy. Keep doing that, and the Muse gets reluctant to come around.
2. Unrecovered perfectionists will often try to use their perfectionism as a way to justify not sharing or completing their work because "it's not good enough yet." Perfectionism and procrastination hang out at the same club. They don't like to acknowledge each other because perfectionism thinks it's too good for procrastination, and procrastination doesn't like to acknowledge anything, but if you look closely they are swaying their hips to the same beat.
3. All of us have holes in our hearts that we are trying to fill, and perfectionists have a hole in their heart that they are trying to fill with an impossible ideal. Clinging to an impossible ideal doesn't fill your heart, it seals it off and makes you defensive and careful. As artists and creators, we must unseal our hearts wherever we have resistance so we can communicate the truth and beauty of what we are hiding in there.
4. Most perfectionists I know are workaholics. Again, these traits go to the same club, but they are besties, taking pride in one another. Like many "isms," perfectionism and workaholism function more as crutches rather than genuine support, and disguise our inner feelings of unworthiness and judgement.
5. Being a perfectionist means living with the constant fear that you are never going to be good enough, and people are going to find out. While striving to be a perfectionist may temporarily soothe our troubled souls, in the end there is only you, imperfection, and the choice of whether or not to accept it.

I love that people like Brene Brown are spreading the concept of the gift of imperfection so widely. I hope that on some level it's changing the way we all think about ourselves and the world.  As I was thinking about how to finish up this post this morning I was asking myself what I think the greatest gift of imperfection is. My answer (to myself) was that being imperfect gives us the opportunity to keep trying, keep going, and keep the fires burning. There's no where to go from perfection because... it's perfect! You can't grow and learn from there, it's done. What do you think about the gift of imperfection? Put your perfectly imperfect answers in the comment box.

wandering the ruins

There is a zen axiom which basically says-- heavy paraphrase here-- do not regret what you did not do yesterday, do not imagine what you will neglect tomorrow. Do what you can right now by living in the present moment. Even if that means you screwed up yesterday and probably will again tomorrow. Do what you know is good for you right now, because now is all that matters. This is a great phrase to keep in mind as you attempt to overcome yourself.

My life has been deeply affected by some events in the past two years, and I have not written about them on this blog. Then, more stuff happened, and because I did not write about previous events, I continued the pattern of not writing about the newer events. Then even heavier stuff happened, and I felt mute. How could I write about this, but not write about these other things that happened? I didn't know where to draw the line, and I clusterfucked myself out of writing anything.

That's part of the reason I have not been writing much on my blog for the past couple of years.

And this has made me a little crazy, not writing on my blog. I love writing my blog, and I have felt a sense of failure as I have continued to neglect it. A few people-- well, one-- told me it's okay I don't post on my blog because no one reads blogs anymore.  I don't even care. If only one person read my blog (my mom) I would still write it. So, right now I am just going to write about this, and no regrets about the other shit I haven't written about. Yet.

This is my friend, Kaeti, who killed herself about 6 weeks ago.  It's an old picture of her, from when she was maybe in her late teens or early 20's. This picture breaks my heart, because it captures so much of who she was: beautiful, sensitive, vulnerable. She was also a brawling, ass kicking extrovert, which this image captures quite well:

Kaeti and I met when I was 19 and she was 20. We met because we both have connections to Delaware, which is a rare thing in California. We did not become friends immediately because I am naturally wary of people who try to be my friend, and Kaeti wanted to be friends. I like to pick my friends and resist being picked. It's weird, but there you go. Also, she was so beautiful I found it annoying. I was still overcoming my adolescent insecurities. A few months later, we ran into each other again in a random setting, and somehow this immediately cemented our friendship.

At the time, we were both recovering deadheads, and she had an inch thick dread on top of her head, with beads and string and maybe even a feather sticking out of it. I met a lot of girls who looked like her on tour with the Grateful Dead in the 80's and had a certain expectation of what she would be like: Smart, a little lost. Like me. So when she whipped out this deep, timeless, melodic singing voice out of her little hippie front, I about fell over. It was comically incongruous, this voice, defying all of my expectations in a moment. It was like seeing the depth and breadth of her all at once, through her astonishing voice. I realized immediately I had totally underestimated her. Little did I know then that she would sing at my wedding 13 years later, and everyone would cry. Listen to some of her music, these are a few of her songs from an album she made. This one is my favorite. This one is my second favorite.

I cannot go through my old pictures right now to find the ones of us together. Or look for the picture of her floating in a hot tub, tucked into a lifesaver float, smoking a cigarette, stark naked, hours after she sang at our wedding. I wanted to bring them to her memorial service on the east coast last weekend, but I could not bring myself to do it. It was like trying to lead myself into a fire. I also cannot bring myself to look up our last email correspondence from about 2 years ago, where she asked if she could call me, and I did not answer.

I wish that I did answer, and that she did call, because in my fantasy, this would somehow save her.

I don't let go of friends easily. With Kaeti it took some work. A crazy fight, a few misunderstandings,  a difficult move back to the east coast (hers), tenuous and brief get togethers thereafter. We did not have a falling out about any one of these things, but those are the reasons that I told myself that it was okay to let the friendship go. And when Kaeti let me go too, I did not get on her ass and ask her why. Our friendship had run its course, is what I told myself. And maybe it did. I don't know. All I know is that the moment I understood she was dead was like a kick to the head and heart at the same time, which fucking hurts.

The fact that she committed suicide puts a spin on events that is difficult for me to comprehend. Knowing her as I did, I know she suffered from depression and a sense of unworthiness which she cleverly disguised with her intelligence and unique brand of irreverent bravado. As we got older, it seemed security and stability continued to elude her as she pursued her music in tandem with nanny and waitress jobs. I always felt that a solid music career belonged to her, but I have no insight into this world, just my own awe of her musical ability. Watching and listening her sing I name as one of my greatest pleasures in life. Her voice always brought tears to my eyes, no matter what the setting. When she sang "Buckets of Rain" at my 20th birthday, I insisted she sing it again. And again. I could never get enough of her voice.

Her death, and her decision to make it so, is a mystery to me.  I'm not angry at her, nor do I feel she is selfish for killing herself, or that she did this as an act of hostility. These are all things I've heard are common emotion when a loved one is a victim of suicide. I think she was desperate, and that makes me feel nothing but sadness.

My other fantasy is that I am a time traveler, and I can go back in my capsule, and fly to Kaeti, and convince her that she needs to live, that she wants to live. Kaeti loved life, nature, and animals with a wide, generous, and tender perspective. Despite our ups and downs, I always loved her, and I believe she loved me, despite my many annoying personality disorders. And she forgives me for being a foolish ass, the way I do her.

land of lost pottery

January is a great time to go through all the stuff you accumulated throughout the year and start throwing it out.  At home, I've been going through closets, my office, the kitchen pantry.  Throwing stuff out, organizing stuff, and giving stuff away.   The studio is also getting attention.  My studio gets cleaned regularly, I can't stand a messy and dusty studio, all it does is give me an excuse to clean instead of work.  The floors get mopped, shelves cleared, things put in order.  But I do have one blind spot, and that's hanging on to random bits of work that I went through the trouble of making and bisquing, and then lose interest in and never got around to glazing.

I think this is a problem that is endemic to many potters.  When I worked for Sandi Dihl, there were pieces of bisqueware that were hanging around when I started working for her, and were still there when I left a few years later.  When I would visit her over the years, the stuff was still there.  In the same place.  It's a lot easier to toss greenware into a bucket of water when it's not working out.  But once you bisque a piece it seems more permanent, therefore harder to let go.

I have to brace myself when it's time to throw out stuff that's collecting dust and taking up room.  I feel so sad when I throw my work away, but after a couple of minutes I get over it and start throwing away anything that's been sitting around for more than a month.  It gets wild, there in the studio.  Nikki was helping me last week while we did some re-arranging and throwing away of the stuff, and she stopped me  from throwing away a few things she thought were worth glazing.

So we put some pieces back on the shelf, and started glazing some right away.  These are images of a few things.  I have to say they are all nice pieces, I'm glad they got glazed up.  I'll be putting them up for sale gradually over the next few weeks in a series of "lost pottery" postings on Etsy, and if you're interested in purchasing you can keep up with new listings on the Facebook page.