destroying and creating

An update is in order. I have been working on remodeling and reorganizing my studio, which is something I do about once a year since my space is pretty tight and every inch must be maximized to its fullest potential.

This time is a little different though. After using Rae's studio earlier this summer while she was in France, I saw how beautiful and inspiring her space is, and I was happy to just sit in there and read if I wasn't making anything that day. By contrast, walking into my own space made me feel constricted, antsy, and the very opposite of inspired. I think the opposite of inspired is depressed-- my studio made me feel depressed.

I looked around my studio with a critical eye, and realized that many of my storage, work, and display decisions were ones that I made years ago when I had very little money, and I was either using what was readily available for free, or spending as little as possible to make something work. What resulted was a mish mashy and ramshackle looking space-- a space where work could be done, no doubt, and had lots of character, but it no longer expressed my personal aesthetic or inspired me to sit and make some stuff.

The first order of business has been to repaint the walls and ceiling. I painted the studio myself about 13 years ago, and while the light green walls were calming and lovely to look at, they also made blue things looks green, gray things look lavender, and so on. Plus, with my work, maybe it was just all a bit too much green. I actually hired someone to do the work last week, which meant piling everything in the studio in the middle of the room:

This was quite humbling, because it just looked like a big pile of trash.

I've been piecing parts of the studio back together, which is another nightmare mess:

I've had to work very hard on keeping my head in the moment and not allow myself to be overwhelmed. Over the next few weeks I will be getting two new ware racks, building a glaze table, acquiring a new stainless steel work table, installing a dedicated workshop sink, and building new display units. No more half measures!

meltdown!

Before I tell you about my kiln meltdown, I need to tell you that I will be at the Clay and Glass Festival in Palo Alto THIS weekend. Come and see me!

Since I'm about to have my biggest retail show of the year, that's usually about the time my kiln decides to go on vacation. Without telling me. Most people see kilns as an inanimate object, but ceramic artists know that kilns, in fact, have minds of their own and like to use their power for good and evil.

So, for the first time in many, many years. I lost a whole kiln load of pottery to a major overfire. My thermocouple, the brand new one I just bought and installed, was faulty, and not reading temperature properly. I just realized I'm blaming my kiln for screwing up when really, it's the thermocouple's fault. Yeah yeah, I know you are supposed to test everything, and use a witness cone, and blah blah blah.  I did not. Anyway, here is a sample of what I had to deal with first thing Monday morning:

Potters know what's happening here, the unschooled think it's trick photography. What happened is the glazes got so hot, it ran like liquid down the sides of the pots, fusing to the kiln shelf. If you look closely at the cake stand, you can see the drips. The only thing that can solve this problem is a hammer and a chisel.

So, how did this make me feel? Well, as I was unloading the kiln and seeing the damage, I felt a little sick in my stomach. It hurts to see beautiful work destroyed, and think of the wasted time and money.

But mostly, I just wanted to clean up the mess as quickly as possible, and move on. While I was chinking pieces of pottery of my shelves, I was listening to an interview with David Jay, who started The Scar Project, photographing women with breast cancer scars. So I'm listening, and chinking away, and comparing my disaster to losing your breasts to cancer, and I figure that this isn't even close to a really bad day. I know from experience that this meltdown won't even cross my mind in a month, so why let it totally get me down today?

Maybe I'm evolving, maybe I don't care as much anymore, maybe I'm able to keep things in perspective. Whatever it was that helped me get through this meltdown without melting down myself, I hope I can do it again!

recovering perfectionist

When I decided to take a break from making pottery earlier this year, I said to one of my friends, "I feel like my art is broken."  I felt like there was something fundamentally wrong with the way I was approaching my art making, that it had gotten twisted and broken, and making pots was no longer bringing me the joy that it used to. I had let it turn into a grind.

I have been doing a lot of reading, trying to understand how I can shift myself back into the joy of making pottery.  I believe my problem resides in my head, in the way I think. A book I just finished is called My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. She is a neuroanatomist, a brain scientist who studies the anatomy of the brain, and she suffered a severe stroke when in her mid-30's. If you haven't already watched her viral TED talk, just go and watch it now so you can get the idea of the amazing message she is bringing to the world. (For reasons that I don't understand, none of my links are working in this paragraph, so copy and paste this to see the TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html)

I have always thought that my streak of perfectionism comes from my creative side, the side that seeks beauty in all things. I suddenly realized while reading Jill's book that perfectionism is a left brain activity-- the logical, analytical, critical thinking side--and has nothing to do with right-brained creativity at all. It's the critical storyteller in the left brain, running its mouth again, ruining the right brained process of creativity. (Sorry, left brain, but you are a bit of a buzz kill in the studio.)

Through the process of recovery from her stroke, Jill was able to re-wire her brain to think differently, and to be more in tune with her right brain. She explains it beautifully in her TED talk and in her book, and I'm not going to attempt to lay it out here. One of her big messages is that the brain has incredible plasticity, and ability to recover from trauma. She's given me a lot of hope that with enough self-awareness and conscious practice, I can tune back into my right brain and make it stronger. And maybe learn to experience joy and lightness again in my pottery studio.

About a week before I read Jill's book, I had a funny thing happen. My beloved Grandma Stiltner died almost two years ago, and I finally sat down and made an urn to store her ashes. The design was based on the trillium flower, a flower that grew in abundance where my grandma grew up in the Pacific Northwest. When I finished the design on the still-green pot, it was perfect. Too perfect. It was bugging me. My hand, seemingly under its own power, grabbed a tool and started slashing at the design, roughing up the surface and breaking up the tight, perfect lines. Part of me was like, "Stop! Stop! If you ruin this you have nothing to replace it with!" (I was a couple of days away from going up to Washington to see my family and had promised to bring the urn.) But I was compelled by a force greater than my fearful left brain to do something to the surface of the pot to make it more interesting, even at the risk of ruining it. I think it was my right brain, showing some early signs that it is still kicking! By the way, I was happy with the way it turned out.

art demons

I have been easing myself very slowly back into some creative projects the past few weeks. Gardening has so taken over my life that doing any kind of "making" has not been an activity I've been engaged with at all. Since making, doing, and creating is so much of my identity, not doing any of those things has created a strange absence in my life, but I don't feel empty.

I have not been working in my own studio, but in Rae's studio across town. Rae is gone for 6 weeks doing the France residency again, and she is generously allowing me to use her studio as my own while she is gone. I asked her for this favor because  every time I walked into my studio, my only impulse was to turn around and walk back out again.  Right now, my studio is a space that represents all of this struggle, and I don't want to be there. It's oppressive.

Rae's studio, on the other hand, is a wide open and beautiful space. As a practice, I've been going there every day, even if it's just for a couple of hours. Mostly, I've been doing paper cut art, which I have always loved and am currently totally obsessed with. I like to look at as many images as I can before bed so I can have paper cut dreams:

elsa mora

This image pretty well captures how I feel as a creative being right now: I'm sitting on all of this beautiful work I've made in the past, and I have all of this beautiful work ready to pop out of my imagination, but my arms are bound up, too connected to my head, and not my heart.  By the way, I wish I made this piece but I did not.  It's Elsa Mora, one of my paper cut heroes.

Paper cutting has made me come face to face with all of the demons I have created through my artwork.  Put a check next to the ones you have brought into your life:

• That's not good enough, it needs to be better.
• Don't waste your time on something that is going to suck when it's finished.
• That's not matching the vision in your head-- start over.
• You've spent six hours creating something that you will never be able to sell.
• That's not as good as Elsa Mora, Peter Callesen, or Rob Ryan, so why are you even trying?

It's interesting having these thoughts while I'm paper cutting, which is basically a leisure activity for me and does not need to be perfect, go to market, or wind up anywhere other than the trash can or on my mother's refrigerator door.  The fact that I like to use artists who are at the top of their game in paper cutting as my own personal bar is not only ridiculous, but bordering on something else quite unhealthy.

I've sacrificed a lot of the joy I find in creating in search of perfection. I've known this for a while, and it has taken quite a toll on my ability to create work that I love. But recognizing this, naming it, and sharing it with you all feels like one little step toward healing.

 This one is mine, with thanks to Pema Chodron. I had to resist the urge to make this piece again, making it better, before I shared it with you. I may, however, take a better photograph of it.

daydreaming the future

I have not sat down to the blank screen of my blog for a couple of months now. I have a lot of things to share. First, I will simply catch you up on what I've been doing.

Mostly, I've been in my garden. I should not say "mine" but rather "our" garden since I share it, and the work that goes along, with my husband and a neighbor. Our garden is very big, much bigger than what you would usually find behind an apartment building in a city like Oakland. It has producing plum, peach, apricot, persimmon, and jujube trees.  And lots of square footage for tomatoes, artichokes, lettuce, peas, carrots, radishes, strawberries, beans, cucumbers, zucchini, celery, onions, melons, and potatoes. And flowers, all kinds. Herbs too. It's a rambly garden with multiple levels and a squirrel problem. It has basically taken all spring to re-establish the beds, fight back the constant encroachment of blackberry, morning glory, and bermuda grass, and get things growing.  We've been managing the garden for 8 years and I know for a fact that in the end, the blackberry will win.

Early in the spring, when it was a lot of plain old manual labor, I put on my headphones and listened to podcasts. I can listen to podcasts for hours at a time. My favorites are "WTF," "The Mental Illness Happy Hour," "Wiretap," "Snap Judgement," "Risk!" and "Strangers." I have about ten more that I regularly listen to, and then about 20 more that I drop in on every once in a while.

Then, I realized my head was always in this alternative space, listening in to a disembodied voice. My hands and body were working the garden, but my mind and soul were somewhere else. I took off my headphones.

A lot of what I'm do while I'm in the garden is stand around and look at the landscape. Spacing out. Trying to figure out the best way to work around the limitations and maximize what we have.

As a child, a constant theme from teachers was that I daydreamed "too much."  I'm daydreaming the future, so back off. I quiet my mind, turn off the podcasts and lower the volume on my own personal bullshit in order to fully engage with the garden and do right by it. I enter the garden mind zone, and pay attention only to what is around me.

I've made some mistakes: transplanted stuff that didn't want to be transplanted, ignored encroaching disease in one area, put shady stuff in sunny spots and sunny stuff in shady. I'm learning to not impose my will, but to listen to what the garden wants and needs first. It is not easy for me to stand down like this, but it makes me feel easier, if that makes sense.

The garden is never wrong. Me, I screw up all the time, but the garden doesn't berate me, or tell me I'm an idiot, or kick dirt at me. It should though. It should send me straight to hell for the death I accidentally bring to the garden. But, no. It just pulls me back in to try again.

I will share more next week, maybe even sooner!

temporary hiatus

I have not posted in a while, and I apologize to my loyal readers who keep checking my blog and seeing nothing new. I see you in my stats, and it jabs me with a little bit of guilt every time. Half of those visits are probably my mom, actually.

So, if you are one of the few people who are still hanging in there with me, here's the deal: I've temporarily run out of things to say on my blog. Or, it's maybe that I want to say something different, and I haven't quite formulated what that is yet. I keep starting a post, and halfway through I lose all idea of what my point was. Which can be entertaining in itself, sometimes, but right now it just seems unfocused and boring.

I'm taking a break from a lot of things, including my pottery business. I'm selling only stuff that is already made, and just needs to be glazed. I took down everything from my website and etsy shop that I have to make from scratch. I've been working in my garden every day and trying not to monitor external indications of my status, like my bank balance, facebook comments, and website statistics.

I think I have been burned out for a while, but I kept going because that's what I do: use my will to overcome obstacles. I'm ready to stop now, just be, and see what comes up next. Sometimes, I get scared that nothing will come up, I'm all washed up, my best work is behind me, and I'm going to drain away every penny I've managed to save the past 10 years and have nothing and I should just forget about taking a break and go back to the studio and do what I do.

But, I've gotten to the point where I can't-- I have no desire to.  I'm just trying to trust myself and my instincts.

When I have something to say again, I will be back. You can sign up to follow my blog by email and when I write a new post, it will be delivered to you. That way you don't have to waste your time checking, and I don't have to feel guilty that you keep checking and there is nothing there. Not that I'm going to check those stats... anymore!

my studio

My studio is less than a half block from my house. I live in a quiet, residential neighborhood, and my studio is housed in a row of unexpected storefronts. These storefronts used to serve as neighborhood businesses back in the day. There are people in my neighborhood who have lived here since the 50's and remember when my studio was a hair salon. The giveaway that my place used to be a hair salon are the electrical outlets every 5 feet on one side of the studio, and virtually none on the other side. The storefronts now house specialized businesses. In our storefront "family" are: an interior designer, a baker/bicycle builder (my husband), a massage therapist, a photographer, a photo stylist, and a musician. And me.

my studio is the third one up.

I've been in my space since 1998, which is the longest I've ever been in one place my whole life.  We lived further down the street until about 6 years ago, and then moved into our current place, which shaved 20 seconds off my commute. My studio is 600 square feet, which may sound like a good-sized space, and it was about 10 years ago. Now, it's a constant battle to maximize every square inch without making the studio feel crammed. I like a spacious, uncluttered workplace, and creating that in a room that needs to serve so many purposes is a constant challenge. Pottery is an inherently messy medium, and no matter how neat and tidy I keep things... it's still kind of a mess. I recently moved my packing and shipping station to my husband's studio next door, which has freed up what was a dark, messy corner in the studio. 

click to make bigger

Sometimes, I think I should just move into a warehouse space, where I could have another 1,000 square feet, but I can't bring myself to do it. For one thing, I love my 30 second commute. In the Bay Area, that short commute is worth its weight in gold. And, I have great landlords who know what I do for a living, and have raised my rent only nominally in the past 15 years. I won't tell you my rent bill because it will only make you jealous. (Thank you, Chris and Rebecca.)

And finally, I just love my space. I've grown a business in it, I've grown as an artist in it, and the very walls seem to be a part of me now. I have dreams about my studio, and in the dreams there are whole other floors, and warrens, rooms and levels to it. I think that's not just a dream of desire-- how I would love another room-- but a representation of what my studio means to me.  A complex, multi-faceted, sometimes mysterious place where I live, and that lives inside me.

click to make bigger