Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Art of the Slam
It's been a dreary day down here in Pittsboro. Cold rain all morning while we loaded the back stack in the first chamber of the "New Kiln". Wet boots and cold toes. The afternoon was a bit less strenuous. Mark was off teaching his class at UNC and Joseph and I were left to finish glazing, roll some wads and I even got to paint a few pots.
What has really had me feeling like the fellow on the receiving end of the embedded video is reading a few pieces in Garth Clark's seminal collection of essays : Shards. I know that his views have been discussed and responded to in great length but this is really my first experience with him. All I can say is that I really wish that I had Henry Glassie to rock me back to sleep, telling me it will all be ok, that our work is meaningful and good and has a place in this world.
Garth talks about nostalgia alot and how much of a force it is in the "Anglo-oriental" school of pottery that am being trained in. He also says that nostalgia is essentialy a bad, useless, emotion. I suppose that my initial reaction is simply that my nostalgia is a reaction to things that I see happening around me in the world as well as in my head that I don't neccesarily like or agree with. Whether that is a worthy response I don't know, but it is a response noetheless.
As I read the essays, after picking myself up off of the gym mats and dusting myself off, there is also a feeling of excitement, like opening a door in your house to a room that you always knew was there but never bothered looking in for a number of motivations, fear being one of them.
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7 comments:
wow, that was intense....don't we learn from tradition? and isn't an essay an exercise of the mind anyway,... hope you discover something great today...
nos*tal*gia - a longing for experiences, things or acquaintanceships from the past.
How can this be a bad and useless thing. I live in a nostalgic frame of mind 90% of the time. There are songs, places, people that I am constantly nostalgic for, it makes me who I am and it gives me a sense of place. I look at my grandmother's pottery and I am with her again, I smell a wood fire and I am raking leaves with my dad once more. These people are gone from my life and I think about them every single day, and when you long to see someone that has left you, nostalgia brings you peace. Your work is honest and good, Alex. I drink from the cup you made nearly every day, I get thirsty, I need water to sustain me and I drink it from a beautiful object. Yes, I could just as easily drink it from a mason jar and that would bring me joy as well, but to drink something that is necessary for life out of a beautiful vessel is a great thing to me. It doesn't solve any major social issue, but we need joy in our lives and using pottery that people I like have made is a special thing. I know there are others that feel this way and this is why potters do what they do. You have to open those doors, or what's the point?
If you believe "that our work is meaningful and good and has a place in this world." then it does. If you don't believe that then it doesn't.
A bit of Taoism!!
If something is good and meaningful for you, it is good and meaningful for you, if not, it isn't.
I agree with Craig, but have to say that at times I do doubt what I am doing. That's seems fair. We drift in and out of confidence. I think nostalgia is a misunderstood emotional state, which is not only about longing when the chips are down, but as a portal to an ideal. I think Tracey hinted at the portal that nostalgia can provide. In the pottery arts, nostalgia can help us summon the mind's eye and can be a "transporter" of our imagination. When we make our work we spend a lot of time anticipating what will be. How the clay will look after drying, being glazed, fired. We may try to visualize the outcome of the process, sometimes getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe it's guesswork, mostly, but a similar kind of longing to know. I think I am certainly in love with 19th c pottery, and all that came with what that process might have been like for those potters. But I don't think of it so much as nostalgia, but more like the act of a music or sports fan, an informal act of worship or reverence.
restating: I've always thought that nostalgia gets a bad rap in our post-modern culture. I think it's a more complex emotional state than we give it credit for.
other related thoughts:
When we sit around a fire looking into the flames, are we entranced because of some sort of faded memory or primal nostalgia?
Anyway, the image of the room isn't clear to me. Are you referring to a kind of subconscious, a painful memory? I guess either way I see those as being part of what we think of as nostalgia. We go into that room for different reasons, not always for the warm fuzzies, but also for the emotional challenge that put ourselves up to when we're in thick of being creative.
Well, I guess you got me thinking on this one.
[my word verification for this post is "flueness"
auspiscious before a firing?]
Thanks for all the input...
The room image is just a silly little metaphor about looking past the school of thought that I am surrounded by and looking at and exploring the other traditions that fall under the broad umbrella of ceramic arts. I don't know if that makes any more sense but...
In dreams room are parts of your creative self which are unexplored. When you dream about new rooms which you have never seen before- it is a door way into something you need to explore. I use to dream about finding houses with lots of rooms and when this was explained to me it helped-
As far as what we do- we all have doubts about why we do this but I think we do it because we have to. Just like you find a street artist who paints on cardboard because that is all he has. We do this because it is in us. The bonus is if you can balance what you do with making a living doing it.
The sun will come out- the pitchers on the post below are beautiful- spring is coming.
Like Tracy says- open the doors- there are things out there for you.
The fact that we have to live in the present makes such a thing as nostalgia possible. The question is what we do with this fondness for things past. Are we obsessively trying to recreate the good things we remember, hopping that they still have some relevance in today's world? Or do we use our nostalgia as a springboard of inspiration? I don't think there is any one right answer as long as you are living your life the way you want to. The past as with every source for ideas is a toolbox that we can put to use. The fact that something is an old idea in no way invalidates it.
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