Friday, January 17, 2014

As the wheel turns: Throwing or glazing?

(Freshly bisqued pieces just unloaded from the kiln.  All pretty and no cracks.)

After a month off, it's time to get back into the studio.  Flow is my word for the year, and I want that in my studio as well as my life.  But I'm feeling eager and overwhelmed all at once.  I want to get going and throwing and creating(flowing) but there's a lot of work sitting there waiting to be finished.  
I don't know about you, but I can keep myself very busy without getting a whole lot done.  It's tricky and sometimes, I don't always catch myself at it.  

It goes something like this:  enter the studio and examine all new pieces, put aside the few with cracks to be fixed, check thrown pieces to see if they're ready for trimming, decide to wait on trimming till all are ready, leave studio for office,  answer email on ipad, go to my laptop to file emails in folders, make copies of specific, important emails, file those in color coded files, delete non-essential emails from laptop, make a list of all duties from various committees that need doing, avoid doing them while I let the dogs out and eat lunch, eat lunch while surfing the web, order a pair of shoes, print out the order, clean the kitchen, do revisions needed on committe document, write email for upcoming class, file those emails, go past the studio and feel the guilt of not working in there.  Make a cup of tea hoping the caffiene will cure my feeling of tiredness.

Busyness and futzing equal frustration. This is not flow.  This is fear of completion and failure.  The longer the pieces sit there in their colorful, bisque-fired beauty, I don't have to face the glaze that went wrong or the crack that appears out of nowhere. This is me being the rock in my own stream.  Flow is really where I want to be.  Desperately.  Honest. 

I sigh and see and accept the rocks are part of my river.  They cannot be avoided.  They are there for a reason, I'm sure.  I'm  just not sure today, what that reason is.  I do see one thing though that those stones in the form of emails and dishes and the web allow me to avoid crashing into my rock of endings all at once.  Instead, I flow around that big mound of work to be finished, look at it in passing and getting up more flow that's needed to make it over the top.  

So, maybe these tasks are stepping stones leading me into the flow after all.  Ah ha...time to put my tootsies into the river, after all and get glazing.  
(Freshly glazed pieces...pretty color covered with clear glaze.)

I have to admit, once I got going, it all just flowed ...just fine.
​(A close up of clear over black under glaze...the clear dries making these cool webbed lines which will disappear when the glaze melts in the kiln...kiln gods willing.)

No comments: