A Very Curious Year

The word of the year for 2016 has been curiosity. I love that word. To me, it has the aroma of a delicious dish baking in the oven, the sound of a light flute playing, the taste of a cilantro leaf, the pale shimmer of a crescent moon rising.  It's expectation and wonder and the unknown all rolled into one.

This year has been a very curious in many ways.

Artistically, my work evolved in a way I hadn't planned or expected. For the past 6 years, my focus has been on throwing functional work: vases, mugs and bowls. This year, my functional  work is evolved into a 50/50 split between throwing and hand building.  

Where before everything was smooth and carefully thrown; new work now combines textures, colors and patterns in one piece. Edges ruffle. Colors blend like wet into wet watercolor paintings.  Marks are more free form and spontaneous. My hand building pieces are heavily textured with playful color combos, cut out lids or flower shapes and I'm using a staining process to get layers of color. 

Curiously, my work and life is more playful.

Domestically, the family has grown to include a new daughter and granddaughter. After many years of living with adult children, I now have a large toy basket in my great room, a crib, high chair, baby gate and shelves filled with rocket crackers, pb&j bars, fruit snacks, juices and sippy cups. The lower cupboards are re-organized with non breakable, toddler safe items and outlets are plugged. I read board books, play with wooden puzzles and dance to Raffi songs on Pandora.  

Outside my studio, events of the last year are an ongoing curiosity.

I could never have imagined what has happened here in the U.S.  I am shocked and embarrassed and upset. As I watch decades of social progress retreat into playground bullying on the world stage, I can't help but be curious about how this happened in this country. As I work to figure it out for myself, I try to remain open and hopeful that in the end, this will bring us all back together again. 

The question isn't what will happen this year but how will I handle what happens? It's too easy to shut down and close it all out. Curiosity, this year's word, lead me to watch world events with wide eyes and a questioning heart.

A new word of the year?   

Finding my new word of the year is always a personal process but perhaps, this new year, it will be a way to connect inward and outward. As I work to deal with the wild swing of last year's change, I need to dial in my focus of world events, to be local before global, to be see through the eyes of my own truth and my own heart. 

As I look for the light through the dark, I make a wish.  For all of us to find the light on New Year's Eve and bring it with us into the New Year.  

Peace and Curiosity.

It's been a long week in America.  Much has changed and I am one of many reeling with feelings long held captive in my soul.  Feelings so deep, words fail to describe them as they surface in waves.  Thoughts whirlpool.  What? How? Why? 

Breathe.  

As I calm my children in their panic and fear.  As I shake my head in disbelief.  As I try to assure my children and their children and myself that somehow good will prevail. 

Breathe deeper.

There is a fog over the lake today.  It a lies thick over the water and deadens the sounds of the ducks and geese.  But just as I let the fog shroud me, too, I turn the corner and there 4 feet away, close to the edge of the lake is a great, blue heron.  Majestic and still in the cold water, waiting with patience undisturbed by my presence, the heron is focused on what is most important in this moment.  Only.  

Breathe again.

The fog hovers still over the water but up above, there is a halo forming in the sky.  The gray shroud is shimmering as the sun gently and pushes its way through.  A light.  A beacon.  Hope.

Breathe.

I wonder as I wander through the woods.  It is the trees rooted below the fallen and decaying leaves that give me strength.  Below the decay of this year's leaves is fertile soil bringing life to the roots of the tree.  I know that no matter who or how or what winds blow through these woods, my tree is safe and strong and growing.

Have you ever noticed that even on a shrouded, foggy day, there is gold?  The yellow, golden leaves that have refused to fall, shine forth.  Anyway. 

Breathe anyway.

 

 

Curiosity and Control.

This was 'opposite' week for me in the studio.  I spent my time immersed in the glazing process which calls for intense organization and control. Usually, my work is more about curiosity. I used to see curiosity and control as total opposites.  As an artist, I needed to be creative and control got in the way.

What if?

Discovery. Creativity. Innovation.  All of these processes need curiosity.  In order to create something new, you need to be open and wondering.  Discovery and innovation thrive on questions and problems.  What if?  Why not?  Where does that go?  How high?  What color can I make now?  How can I build this?  This is me in my studio on making, building and throwing days.

I love studio days spent trying new ideas.  Throwing a new form.  Rolling a slab and letting it tell me what it wants to be today.  Will it be a vase, jar, plate, platter or mask?  Testing new textures with things I find in the woods or around the house.  Mixing a new color combination or using the underglazes like watercolors and inks.  I can form, paint sculpt or carve, it's my choice and everyday, I'm led by my curiosity.

I love curiosity.  I hate control.

Or do I?  I think I hate control because it's run my life for so long.  Stop.  Go. Stand, kneel, sit, repeat.  But cleaning out my closets has opened up another way to see control.  I've lived quite a nice life so far.  I've worked in interesting places, doing interesting and creative work.  I've raised two healthy, smart and creative humans.  I am still doing work that I love to do because I'm choosing to do it. And I like being in control of my time and my work.

In the studio, glazing requires control.  I start preparing each and every piece by sanding any rough edges, wiping off the dust and waxing where I don't want the glaze. The actual glazing begins much like a day in chemistry class.  Exact measured amounts of water.  Correct combination of chemicals.  Proper dispersement to create a glaze with the correct viscosity.  If the glaze is too thick, my colors will be clouded.  Pits and bubbles can form.  If it's too thin and the piece will not be coated evenly and it won't be food safe. My control at this stage can make or break a piece. Literally.

The curiosity-control dance.

I love questions. I love wondering, what if? It gets me all fired up to head into the studio and dig out my clay, mix up my paints and make something new.  Curiosity leads the way as I throw and sculpt.  It's not just the clay that grounds me, it's the fresh air of wonder and possibilities, that essence of 'curious' floating in the atmosphere. 

After the creativity and curiosity, control steps in to keep track of the details like show contracts, labels, inventory sheets, and supplies. It helps me fill out my firing book where log in what worked and what didn't. This week, as I was glazing in the studio, I realized just how important control really is to my work.  With control in my corner, calculating and mixing my glaze the same each time are simple steps to follow.  Glazing requires slow, methodical, controlled flow.  

Curiosity and Control make a good pair.  

You need two people to do the tango.  The push and pull of the partners stepping back and forth and around echo the flow of curiosity and control. I  see curiosity like the music that feeds the creative process and gets my feet moving.  Yet, to complete a creation, I need control to keep my footing. Step by step.  Just like the tango, my creative life needs the push/pull, turns/twirls of curiosity and control to dance together in balance.

Happy Thoughts.

As I sit here on the window seat, a cool, sweet breeze flows past me.  The sky is blue.  The clouds are white and fluffy just perfect for seeing faces and animals and daydreaming about the stories of their lives in the sky.  

Do they know it's summer? Are they bored just floating up there?  Do they ever do anything?

As a child, summer was vacation.  Summer was riding my bike through the woods all day.  Skating up and down all the streets in my neighborhood.  Swimming all day in the neighborhood pool.  Going to the store to buy candy.  Summer was reading on my friend's covered patio from the stack of books I collected weekly from the local library.  Learning to embroider from my friend's mother.  Summer was playing ghost in the graveyard after dinner in the dark.  Or playing the Game of Life.  Little did I know that Summers for the rest of my life would never be the same.

Long, lost summer.

It's a slow process from child to adult and summer gets lost along the way with tricycles and stuffed animals and Nancy Drew mystery books.  We all go through it.  We go to work.  We have children.  We watch them play all summer as we fold the laundry and make sandwiches.  I loved watching my children play make believe in the backyard.  I helped them make pirate ships and castles to sail away to their very own wonderlands in the clouds of imagination.

Now, I want mine back.  But is it even possible?

As I sit on the window seat feeling the fresh, sweet breeze I'm curious.  And I wonder, why can't I have my summer back? Why not be a modern day, female Peter Pan?  Travel the world in my imagination where I am captain of my own ship.  Where is Tinkerbell when you need her?

Poof. 

I am captain of my own ship.  Yes, I am.  I walk in the woods everyday in my own neighborhood.  I still read book after book, usually at night.  Instead of embroidery, I throw and paint clay.  And every night, I sit on the window seat and watch the sun go down eagerly awaiting the time when the sky turns Maxfield Parrish blue with rose silhouetting the hills and trees in the distance.   

Think happy thoughts.

My summer isn't lost after all.  I can sit on the window seat and read and sip ice tea and look at the clouds and dream. Maybe what I need to remember is not my childhood summers but Summer's now.  And how easy it really is to just sit and be.

Happy Thoughts.  That's all it takes, doesn't it? And, maybe a little help from Tinkerbell.

A Curious Week.

My word of the year popped up almost every day this week.  I didn't set it as a goal or even an intention, but there it was all the same.

Studio Curiosity.

Instead of rushing around and pushing myself to get back in the studio and work, work, work, I got curious.  What is it that really pushes me to create?  And is it coming from the right place? Or maybe, there is no right place?  

After some forced meditation, ok I know force and mediation don't go together.  But sometimes, I have to make myself sit down and be still.  Music helps me settle and journaling helps me distract my mind enough to hear my inner voice.  Here's what I heard: guilt and fear.  Those are the forces that chase me around and around inside the studio and out.  

Curious.  I decided to try something different.  Sitting and not doing any creating until I truly felt the desire.  My mind kept throwing guilt and fear words at me like: procrastinator, lazy, and the worst: hobbyist.  Ouch.  I felt that old urge to rush, rush, rush and push some work out.  

I kept sitting.  After a while of watching the clouds move across the sky, listening to my dog snoring and my cat padding around softly, I had an idea.  I wanted to try to combine an old love with a new one.  Into the studio I went, rummaging through my closet and grabbing out inks, watercolors and even an old watercolor paper pad.  

I happily played with my watercolors and inks on paper on one side of my studio.  While it dried, I took out a few thrown porcelain bowls, got out a few under glazes and played again, treating the bowls like watercolor paper and the under glazes like paints and ink.  

Social Media Curiosity.

Last year, I was asking myself questions about social media.  Did I want to be on all the social media sites I was on?  Were they necessary for business or pleasure?  And did they actually bring me business or pleasure?  

Since then, I've said no to LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest.  Even more curious, is how the topic was being discussed at an art meeting last week, too.  There are people who have never and do not want to be online at all.  Some who are completely invested online.   When asked, I said I was shocked when I counted the number of online media sites I'd  signed up for over the years. 

While I do believe the Internet is a good resource for me, I'm not sure which sites are really right.   

Food Curiosity.

Like so many people, I've been sucked into the health and diet vortex.  Eat this food and be healthier.  Stop eating this food and lose weight.  Count your steps, your calories, your body mass index, your breath.  I'm a healthy person but what I'm sick of is all this stuff swirling around me.  And no matter how healthy someone might say it is, worrying about it all the time, isn't.  I'm going to stop buying into it, on tv or in the store.  

Instead, I'm going to follow my body with curiosity.  What am I hungry for?  What smells good and looks good and tastes good?  Where would I like to go...for a walk...to yoga...both? How do I feel right now?  What feels right to me?  

I don't know what kind of work I'll make this year or if it will be any different than last year.  I'm not sure which social media sites I'll keep for my art business and which ones I'll keep for pleasure.  And food wise, will I be doing the right thing or not?

I don't know.  But I do know, I'll be curious to find out.