I have previously mentioned that often, clay represents visual metaphors in life. It is my selected medium and it is the best way I know how to express all that I experience in life...the good, the bad and the ugly.
Lately, I have been playing with the idea of "surface tension" - the tension that can inhabit both our clay and our lives. The contradiction of what is happening on the inside of both vessel and mind can be very different from what is shown to the world. Pushing limits, stretching ourselves to points we couldn't imagine, compromising our very being and sometimes temporarily having to give over to being someone other than our "true or desired self" can produce such tension as to produce millions of tiny cracks. The cracks can be both beautiful and ugly - but none the less, they are there to deal with - and even with those cracks we must find a way to stay whole and together lest the whole "vessel", "person" fall apart.
The images of the pieces were created by working while the piece was freshly thrown and very wet on the inside - the outside I treated to a fast drying making for a piece very different on the inside and out. Like a human our insides being, warm and fleshy, soft, and very much alive yet on the outside, our skin represented to world so to speak, taking the disappointments of life bravely - our shell, our skin toughened to a point of dried leather - always protective, sometimes tough and looking quite different than if we could see like a razor sharp beam straight into the heart of human.
In this tension and contradiction I find beauty. It reminds me to listen in carefully, to know when to stop pushing and to know when it is OK to push harder. My hands doing all the work I really don't need my eyes to know. The intuitive nature of all things...and more importantly simply to think of nature.
When I viewed the pots from a distance I saw an earth, scorched and tried, used and taken advantage of, desperately trying to stay a whole while little was being given back to replenish - no drop of water to return the outside of the pot to a soft and flexible being, hands continuing to push the pot to a near point of fracture so great it would determine the end of the very organic alive state it was existing in. Had I pushed further it would have turned into something else...and I too would have been someone else.
Art has always been available to teach us things about ourselves, others, nature and all that makes up beautiful earth. Knowing limits, knowing patience, knowing listening, knowing intuition and knowing acceptance are all here to serve us on a journey of hopefully more peaceful warriors.
For now, I'm keeping a bit of my leathery skin and staying as soft on the inside as I can. It will be the viewer of the "pot" and of myself who determines if this work of art has struck the perfect balance of contradiction and surface tension.
