order for the day

I have been an avid public radio listener from high school on. I would listen every morning and every evening, and later all day long at my studio. I had to stop listening to NPR's news reports and daily shows after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was deja vu all over again, and I just really could not take it anymore. I was totally pissed off and depressed by noon, a deadly combination for any human being, much less someone trying to make pretty things.

I started checking in on NPR again in the last year, mostly to follow election coverage. I've even been falling back into old habits, setting my clock to 91.7 so when I wake up, I'm listening to NPR. This morning I woke up in bed alone, my cat staring at me from the bathroom as she does almost every morning. My husband is out of town, and I was drowsily listening to a woman in Ohio talking about how she's been unemployed for months and she is probably going to lose her house. I felt very sad for her, and also sad for myself as I realized I'm exposing myself to the Doom and Gloom report and ruining my day before I even get out of bed.

While it's important to be informed, I think exposing oneself to a constant stream of bad news masking itself as information is toxic to the mind and the soul. I know many artists listen to NPR all day in their studios. Three words for you: Turn it off goddammit. That's actually four words. You are poisoning your brain and also convincing yourself that the end of the world is nigh, if only subconciously.

Being happy and optimistic these days is both difficult and neccessary for anybody paying attention to what is going on in the world. Being happy does not mean being placid or content. It just means acceptance. I think the greatest happiness comes from accepting reality. The reality is, we are going through these experiences that one could catergoize as difficult and a bit scary, because we don't know exactly where we are going to wind up.

I have faith that we will wind up in a better place, a place more grounded in reality. I believe that because I am working everyday to keep myself grounded in the present reality, and not allow myself to spin out in fear and anxiety. Some people think fear is the most logical reaction to have to our present conditions, and if you listen to the news, one could believe the whole country is running scared. I think we have to be stronger than that. Being scared is easy. When you're scared, you're helpless and you don't really have to do anything. Being optimistic and happy is the bravest thing that any of us can do, and the most difficult. Try it today.

the magical vibration of art

There are some pieces of ceramic work of my own that I keep and don't ever sell. Sometimes, it's the first piece of a series and it contains a seed of an idea that I want to preserve for myself. Occasionally it's the end of a series and I want to add it to my personal archive so I have a physical reminder of the work I've made, and a path to show how far I've come. And every once in a while a piece is just special. It contains a magical vibration that launches it into a different sphere, and I can't quite bring myself to put a price tag on it.

I wish that I could make pieces like that all the time, the pieces that have the spark of magic. Trying to put my finger on exactly what that spark is, how to name it, is like trying to describe a smell. Trying to mindfully re-create it is impossible, because it's a gift. And the gift reinforces the dream of art; my dream is that when I create ceramic pieces I'm participating in a human narrative that hungers for inspiration in beauty and creativity. I struggle with this notion sometimes, because I am personally moved by art that really gets me thinking, that tells a story about the condition of being a person on this planet.

When I was younger than I am now, I really wanted to be a painter and tell these stories. They are all stored up inside me. But when it came to putting the brush to canvas, I usually choked. I painted for years and there are very few paintings I created that I felt any satisfaction with. If I continued to follow the painter path, maybe I would have gotten better, or maybe I would have become really bitter as I continued to struggle with getting what was inside me onto a canvas. Pottery, for me, is the easiest thing in the world. The second I learned how to throw on the wheel, I was done with painting, I never looked back. With pottery, I don't feel the need to tell stories, I just want to blow people's minds with gorgeous pieces. If I'm really good, maybe I can take them out of the moment they are in and put them in another place as they contemplate my work.

making the mold

This weekend I jumped on my cruiser bicycle and pedaled over to Diana Fayt's San Francisco studio for a tutorial on making molds. Now, I have my man Hector at the factory who makes my molds and produces my bisqueware for wholesale, and he is my true ace in the hole when it comes to running my business. But the problem with producing at that level is the cost. When I decide on adding an item to my wholesale line, it's a big investment. Sometimes, that item may not end up selling so well, but I feel tethered to keep selling it because I dumped a bunch of dough into getting it produced. Or, I might have a great idea for an item, but if I feel it will only sell for a short time because it's trendy or seasonal, then I don't see the value in spending the money on getting production up and running on it. These two issues are things that make me feel a bit stale at times.

I've been considering this problem for a while, and the recession makes this issue even more front and center for me. If I don't want to get outflanked by this economy, I have to sharpen my reflexes and be quick to respond to what is happening. Big, cumbersome money investments into new designs and pieces feels like exactly the wrong thing to do at this moment, but sitting around and making the best of what I have seems slow and plodding. I've been obsessed for the past 3 or 4 months with the idea of making my own molds for items and slip casting them myself. That way I can test out new designs, see how they sell, and if they do great, then I can have Hector take over. If they don't, I'm not all tied down to it because the only thing I've invested is some time. Time is money, of course, but I'm finding that right now I have a little bit more of it because of the overall slowdown in business. And I'm convinced that having some mold making skills will push my work to a new and different level.

Diana knows how to make molds, so she very kindly invited me to her studio to give me a lesson. We spent all afternoon, and a bottle of wine, working on a mold for a new item that I'm in love with right now, but there is no way I can produce each one solely by hand. It makes my neck hurt just thinking about it. I found that mold making really appeals to me. You have to plan ahead, think about how it's all going to come together, and be precise. And the other great thing is that knowing I'm working on acquiring this new skill stimulates other ideas in my brain for items I can make. I used to make such labor-intensive work, which I pretty much gave up on because the effort became overwhelming. But now I can think more about making that one crazy, labor-intensive piece, and then just make my mold for it. I just can't wait to cast the first one!

starting fresh

Happy new year! I hope everyone is in an industrious mood as we ready ourselves for 2009. Me, I'm getting serious. I started by hosting a party for my pottery posse on the first day of the year, asking everyone to bring their old pots that needed to be smashed. The pots that are perfect except for the hairline cracks, the part that stuck to the kiln shelf, the bad design, the handle that fell off, the chips... basically, the pots that are too fucked-up to sell, or nobody wants to buy, but are still hanging around the studio, gathering dust and taking up space.

See, this is the thing about being a potter: there is not a heartier soul on the planet, and we are fantastically gifted. I mean, we make beautiful wares out of mud for christ sake. Like every gift, it has its good side and its bad side. The good side is, we make beautiful wares out of mud. The bad side is, we get stuck with the stinky fruits of our endeavors, but we think we can make a diamond out if that turd eventually. Remember those dead bird cake stands? They have been sitting on my shelf since spring, and those babies are big, heavy, and depressing to look at. I don't want to sell them, because they are too messed up, and I don't want to throw them out, because they represent so much effort. So I lug them around, drained of a tiny bit of energy every time they catch my eye.

We set up the pottery smashing station out of our dining room window. It was ideal because the garage is below our apartment, and there is enough distance between window and driveway to create an incredibly satisfying smashing sound:

or not:

The first pot I tossed, I must admit I was conflicted. It hurt. I felt sad, and not sure I was doing the right thing. It was like giving a beloved pet The Shot when they are limping around, in pain, and unable to eat anymore, but you still love them and want them to keep on living so you can love them some more. But I got over it as I tossed out more and more, and the weight of carrying around these pots was lifted. In that way, it was not like giving a pet The Shot, because when all the pots were in shards in the driveway, I was happy they were gone, and pleased with my cleared off shelves. If you have not gotten rid of those old pots, do it now. It was totally fantastic, appeals to the destructo in all of us, and the noise it makes is really cool.

all together now: dream

I've had a lot on my mind lately. For one, I have no idea what this new year will bring. I feel equal parts anticipation mixed with trepidation. Not fear, exactly. But curiosity. I know that many things I have taken for granted are in position to start shifting. This is not a bad state of affairs, but in fact, an excellent time to be more fully in touch with what is important. With this thought in mind, I've been sleeping like a baby for weeks now, which is unusual when the old brain is boiling.

I'm an ambitious person. I have big dreams, and an expectation that my dreams will come true... if not exactly in the way I dreamed them. There is always the persistent question; will you be able to make your dreams happen? This is the way of the world. When things are going good, your dreams seem within reach. When things are going shitty, dreams seem tenuous. But in reality, your dreams are always just that: dreams. Whether or not your life is good or shitty, your dreams have still not become events that can be placed under the category of reality. So my question is, does a dream's actualization depend on factors happening out there in reality, or do they depend more on the dreamer and their state of mind?

I'm reading a terrific novel right now, called "Netherland". I love the title, because it implies this subconscious underworld that we all move in, even as we go about our day-to-day on the surface of the planet. I'm not sure is this is what the author intended, but that's what I get from it. Also, the protagonist is from The Hague, which is also very interesting, since this book takes place in New York City immediately after 9/11. So the title has many facets and underpinnings, which I'm not going to go into right now. The book is partly about the big, even grandiose, ambitions of one of its characters, Chuck. He is, in his little world, a mover and a shaker. In one scene, the main character has just told Chuck that his wife is seeing another man. Chuck asks, "What do you want to do about it?" Our protagonist, rather helplessly, says what many of us say when we are dealing with this kind of situation: "What can I do?" Chuck says:

Not can do: first figure out out what you want to do. It's Project Management 101: establish objectives, the establish means of achieving objectives.

To summarize the rest of the interaction, Chuck goes on to say that if you do not follow up on what you want, you are in danger of having regrets. And his bottom line is, of course, no regrets. I'm sharing this little bit of the book with you because I really think we all need a little Project Management 101 in this new year of 2009, and we all need some Dream Management too. I have the sense that, while we have achieved some big dreams, like _______ (fill in the blank here), we are being disappointed by our failures in smaller dreams, like_______ (you know what to do). So while we all try to figure out our resolutions for 2009, let's do our homework first: What do you want to do?

vacation mode

I unloaded my last kiln a few days ago. There were some great successes and a couple of disappointments. A couple of people got emails that they will not get their piece before Christmas. I would usually be so strung out about that, absolutely crazed that someone did not get their piece of pottery by Jesus's birthday. This year I just sighed, drank a bottle of wine, and forgot about it. I had already cut a deal with god that if she let this piece come out of the kiln perfectly, I would be happy for a little while:
This is a piece that a new customer ordered about 8 weeks ago. I made two of these babies a few years back, one for myself and one for another client. They are obviously very labor intensive with a lot of small details that can go wrong. I was praying the whole time I glazed it-- the glazing alone took about 3 hours and you have to get in all of the nooks and crannies with a tiny brush. This is my bad boyfriend glaze: gorgeous and perfect when it behaves, abusive and bubbly when it's not. As you can probably tell from this image, we are all in love and happy right now.

And then Sara and I had a blow-out dinner at Wood Tavern. Her last day with me as my assistant was Wednesday, and now she's goin' to grad school. This was a gift she gave me:
I can't wait to start drinking the 20 proof sake I received from one of my loyal customers with this set. Man, I'm talking about drinking a lot on this post. Sara and I drank a lot too at Wood Tavern, as we both have a love for the red wine. I will really miss her. Everyone needs an assistant who kicks their ass as much as mine did, gives you that skeptical look as you are trying to bullshit your way through a problem, or totally ignores you as you are having a hissy fit with the tape gun. But she's going on to bigger and better challenges, and I'm excited for her.

And finally, I as tagged by two people recently. I'm kind of like an old man when it comes to tagging. I'm mentally shaking my fist and yelling, "Get off my lawn you taggers!" I'm sorry, people who tagged me, I promise I will do a tagging post while I'm on vacation. I know everyone is dying to know 7 random things about me. And with that, I"m out for now!

lessons from the land of panic

It's usually about this time of year that I start to wonder how the fuck I'm supposed to pull off this holiday thing. I will usually have a stack of orders that are half-done, open studios and shows to prepare for, emails and postcards to send out, studio appointments to keep with people, and stores screaming their heads off for more stuff. All of this activity is usually squeezed down into two or three weeks of frantic activity where I sleep little, eat even less, and make up for that by drinking endless cups of coffee all day and try to wind down at night with endless glasses of wine. I'm a wrung-out mess by the 24th and my husband is ready to have me locked up. Ho ho ho.

I get myself into this situation because I have a tendency to be a procrastinator when I have a lot of activity coming up. I put things off. I've noticed this about myself for years, and this tendency becomes especially troublesome when one is trying to run a successful business. I always manage to pull it off: the orders all ship on time, the studio gets cleaned up and made presentable for customers, the postcards go out, and no one gets disappointed. But it all comes at a cost to myself as I scramble.

I realize that I like to be pushed to the wall. No, I don't like it, I need it. The situation doesn't feel real until my heart is pounding with panic and my head is spinning. I love to make a long list of shit that needs to get done and then freak out as I see how much I have to do and how little time I have to do it. No one can jump into action the way I do.

I'm trying to change this, if for no other reason than I'm sick of having to spend extra money on rush shipping of supplies. This year I sat down in early November and made my list with a target date for each item. I was already running behind, I should have made this list in September, but it was better than waiting for the weekend after Thanksgiving as I usually like to do. I didn't make all of my target dates, but I came close. It helped to remind me that panic doesn't make things more real, it just things more difficult to deal with. I know a lot of artist types are procrastinators in the same way I am, and it's easy to get away with because we are artists, dammit, and we do things artistically. Sometimes chaotically. But I'm getting older, and I hope a bit smarter. I don't have energy to waste on freaking, I want to put it into my art. And I'm happy to report I haven't had a single meltdown this whole season. Now that is a Christmas miracle!