CERAMICS
Ceramics. Pottery. Artisanry. Ceramic Art. Installation Art. Spatial Art. Performative Art. A Philosophy of Making. A Philosophy in the Making. Ceramics is a lot about Making. A lot about Centering in the Making. At some point every student of ceramic art sits at the potter's wheel with the intention of centering the clay for throwing beautiful, round ceramic ware. Beauty was the ultimate goal. But in my thrown pieces there was no beauty. My thrown pieces were disasters. I was miserable at Centering. I didn't have the patience it took. Eventually I didn't become a good thrower. I didn't become a potter. At some point I imagined I was a bad person because I was a bad thrower. But I was not. I had other qualities I could use for making ceramic art. Clay was the key. Clay, this strange material of shapeless earth. Earth! There was so much in clay I didn't understand. I wanted to know more. I still want to know more. There is a lifetime of questions embedded in clay, in the earth.
"At the center. Pottery as metaphysics. Centering. How all these thoughts and experiences create a sense of an enormous cosmic unity, a sense of a quiet inner unity, a unity within me, child of that vast single god-sea, that unity, wherein we swim."
(M.C. Richards, Centering, 1989)