The Big One (Part 2)

After much consideration, I took the risk to cut away one of the bosoms. I had spent the previous night, just staring at the pot. I was surprised that an hour passed and because I had suddenly realised the time, I had rushed back home without doing anything to the pot. I finally did it today and I am very pleased with the result. The pot now looks different from every view. It looked like a flower bud, at times a petal, sometimes a feminine figure and then a side view of a woman. The pot ca my imagination well. I was falling in love with it.I had to make a lot of adjustments to the opening before I was able to call it a day.

The Big One

I was lost. The pot was taking form soon but I had no ideas yet, just intuition. As I worked the walls up, I was thinking about the walls I built around myself. Are they as yielding as the soft clay, or have they hardened up. Perhaps the walls have been broken through, and then patched up again.







At a certain point in time, that I cannot remember, the unfinished pot and me came to an understanding. A feminine form soon took shape and I found that I didn't know how to end the pot. How high should it go and how will the opening of the pot look like? I was running out of time.



It looked so obviously feminine and there was no mystery to it. I still could not agree with the pot. Something was missing or maybe too much was there. I will toy around with it first. Hahah!

Facing My Fears

By far, this is the most challenging form for me to undertake particularly because my coiled pot has collapsed halfway before. So now, I'm more cautious now thus making the whole process a little more tedious than I would have liked it to be. Still, I'm happy to note a great progress in my coil rolling. Rolling coils is not my forte, apparently, and I had struggled greatly because of my inability to roll a decent coil. Practice makes close to perfect and I am happily rolling away longer coils. This helps greatly as it takes me half the time to build up my pot. I have not decided on my final design yet but the clay will talk to my hands soon enough.

Shape me, Hold me

Be my friend

Feel me, Hear me 

Understand

Filled and Emptied

Day to day

Till the last drop

Just...Stay

Your Desire, Is Your Desired Failure

In this lesson, I learnt that it was much
harder to keep a straight and upright form when coiling a cylindrical form and that it was easier to go astray with the form. But what does the potter desire, really? Of course I would have to agree that one should master the 'right' form first, before venturing to other designs. The virginal beauty of a perfect, upright form can never be denied. But one can't scoff at the beauty of a form gone astray either. A perfect form may demonstrate the potter's skill and control, but an imperfectly formed vessel may perfectly demonstrate a potter's creativity and character. It may even be more challenging to control a form that has gone astray. Personally, I find that it more pleasurable to listen to the clay and let it create it's own desired form. I get my inspirations during the process, not before it. The ideas build on as the coils build up. Clones of perfect pots are not for me as I seek to find perfection through imperfection, where the ideal state may be perfectly imperfect.

"It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through the opposite." Soren Kierkegaard