Midnight shift confessional....

This is the time I call the “Grind”. My friends have gone home to their beds to drift off into sleep and I am left alone with the kiln, the dogs, and my thoughts. The next two and a half hours will draw by slowly. The moon sinks lower in the gathering clouds, and the flame slowly works its way farther and father back into the kiln. These are some of my favorite times. I’ve fired this kiln 10 or 12 times, Ive lost track by now, but each time I’ve kept watch over it in the small hours of the night. Its an easy kiln to fire, rarely if ever stalling, it sometimes seems like a giant, walking up a steep hill, slowly but showing no sign of tiring. As if it would fire the pots into puddles on the kiln floor.

I toss two more pieces of slab into the fire and the kiln roars to back to life. 2050 degrees reads on the pyrometer. This is also the last time I will sit here at this hour. Coyotes are suddenly calling out in the pasture across the road. The dogs wake for a minute from their slumber to let out a furtive growl and drift back off.

This is the part of being a potter few will get to understand or appreciate. It is the hidden part, the quiet part. There is no glamor to be found sitting in front of a fire at 3:45 in the morning, there is no one to watch, no one to applaud. Even the spring peepers are quiet tonight. A bullfrog sounds in the darkness.

There is one question that comes back to me over and over. Why do I feel, amidst all that is happening in this world, that the only thing I can do is make pottery? Is it because of some resignation? Is it because I grew up in a family of artists, like a learned behavior ground into my bones from a childhood of watching two parents making their art.

In my family there are those who strayed from the path of art, quite a few actually, but the feeling remains; I come from a family of artists. My mother, my father, my sister, my brother, my step grandfather, my aunt, and my great grandfather.

The latter is the one who weighs down the heaviest. I never even met the guy. He died thirty years before I was born, but that man has provided both a great gift and a great weight. Old Henri did things that can’t be repeated and he casts a very, very long shadow.

It hasn’t been until recently that I’ve come to understand a few things. If you hide in a shadow, denying its existence or trying to melt into the darkened ground, it will go nowhere. Instead it hangs heavier, like an enormous over cast sky extending as far as the eye can see in every direction.

You also can’t run from it as the shadow has no end. You can’t change your name or lie about it. It would be like trying to run out from under that endless grey extending interminably on the darkest days. Instead, there seems to be only one option left and that is to look directly into the shadow and acknowledge it. Spread you hands to the sky and await the rain.

When people ask me about Henri Matisse I rarely know what to say. I get fidgety and nervous and before long word spreads not to ask that kid because he hates talking about it. And there is some truth to that, but also a bit of falsehood. Its been my own denial all these years that keeps me in that place. My own shame for not knowing anything about the man, not asking, and not caring. But I would like to clear the air. I might not be able to tell you the name of his favorite model. But if you ask, Ill tell you what its like to be me.

I know maybe this seems like a roundabout way to breach this subject but it’s not the easiest thing for me to work into. Sometimes the pen just has to start moving somewhere. We all want to be recognized for our works and labor. I don’t want to over shadow the shadow. I just hope that one day, many years down the road, people will look on my work and see an integrity and honesty that equals some of those who came before.

Alex Matisse
2150 degrees
4:30 am
May 18th 2008