In preparing for a few upcoming events, I’ve been cruising through images of old work and  thinking a lot lately about how this whole pottery thing got started and where it has been going.

Here is the quick version:

like a lot of clay people, I got started by accident and I was hooked before I even knew it.

Having realized that I wanted to refine and expand my skills as a craftsman and a potter, and that this might very well require so much time that it could not be relegated to a hobby, I decided the best way to improve my skills and therefore my work was to simply work as much as possible.  The theory was that the act of creating pots in the studio would lead to better and better work.  Although I do not stop and critically assess my work as often as I should, I have always had my own little inner critic which pushes my work forward even if it seems to be in tiny little steps.

I always wondered if other potters and creative types had this same little voice, the “perfectionist” voice?  I’ve long since accepted that the little voice will not go away, and so I’ve had to adopt various strategies to deal with it and still maintain my own sanity. Especially as a creator of things who returns to the same forms in a repetitive cycle, who then subjects those things to an uncontrolled firing process, one must not wait for perfection.  But I do believe that the “perfectionist” voice has value as it has caused me to always seek to improve my forms…sometimes in tiny little ways that no one else may even see…but to continue improving and refining as I go.

I’ve found several examples of this recently.

I heard a story on the radio about an Olympic athlete describing her training process.  She described the physical and mental rigors of training day in and day out, of the hundreds of thoughts racing through her head and she raced around the track.  And how after crossing the finish line and looking up to see the time, she felt ‘it is always bad’.

I sighed when I heard that…I know what you mean I said.

I found another expression of this idea in a video clip of Ira Glass discussing what some creative people go through as they are honing their skills.   He was talking mainly about writers and producers, but the point is the same.  I would summarize it as:

As you are working, you know that your work lacks something and even without knowing what exactly it is that is lacking it does not measure up to what you consider ‘great’.  So you keep working.  On your skills and your product and refining and editing.  And this may take years.

I just ran across this letter, which was in response to this article. These point to this issue plus a whole lot more for another day.

I can really relate to both sides of this discussion.  There are some days when I want to smash half of the pots I just made simply because they are not right, just not good enough.  Then again how can I go around smashing half of what I just made?  On “those” days I have come to remember a passing line I never forgot, uttered by a potter more experienced than I:  “it’s an emotional roller coaster,  being a potter.”

I have determined that the little voice really is helpful.  On “those” days I usually walk away from the ware board before smashing many pots.  And although I generally still do not like looking back at older pots, I tend to look now at where things have gone rather than where they were then.

Here are a few examples of one of my favorite forms, one from each of the last four years.  I certainly like the most recent one the best, but maybe it’s just me.

The last week has seen the first pots of the next firing cycle.  Some times it seems odd how much time is spent not in the studio when one is supposedly a studio potter.  Aside from all of the general day to day duties, the stacking  and moving of wood to heat the house, etc., there is always something else to be done.  Usually on the computer it seems.  Just when you think you may never get started making pots, you get enough things crossed off  of the list that it seems safe to venture into the studio.  You remember that you enjoy being in there creating endless boards of pots even if they have no particular destination at that moment.  You wonder why you procrastinated beginning, and does anyone else out there do the same thing?  And then you check into the blogosphere and realize that sometimes an assignment is useful, and yes we potters do have some sort of  instinct to procrastinate the very thing we enjoy the most.  Strange creatures, but at least I know I’m not the only one.

Lucky for me, I had made it into the studio a day or two before the Michael Kline Challenge otherwise I may not have finished my assignment.  I had already made a board of small bowls, trimmed and slipped them, so I was ready to make another.

Now it’s onto other familiar forms and a few new ones too.  And not a day too soon, somehow February is moving right along and March is filling up already.  Just as the show at Claymakers is coming down  I’ll be teaching a one-day demonstration workshop with Joy Tanner at their studio in Durham, NC.  It will be a great chance to see two different approaches to forming and altering pots, with two potters dedicated to the soda firing process.  More details to come, but the workshop is scheduled for Saturday, March 13th, 10-5pm.

Later in March I’ll begin co-teaching a 9 week class that meets once a week class with Linda McFarling focused on making pots for salt and soda at the Odyssey Center, in Asheville, NC.  Teaching again down at my old stomping grounds and with one of my clay mentors too.  Should be a good time.

Better get busy making that kiln load of pots to fire by then.