I've found myself deleting posts recently, which is a sure sign that my compass is wobbling. and so I find myself skimming every single blog on Emily Murphy's Pottery Blog roll. I'm about half-way through. this has given me some sense of how to measure mine. .....ahhh, so....... one of the interesting things is that I genuinely don't know who you are. And of course I'm writing for you, because fundamentally, I started this blog as a forum for information about my kiln in specific, but more broadly, firing with alternate energy. or just alternate energy in general, or the politics around energy use. or the ethics of consumption, apparently. or, it seems, the energy of bodies doing their thing. it seems that I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how my sensory body moves through culture. sometimes I manage to connect that coherently to the how and why I am a potter, but I think that for the most part, that connection is not fully clear and it seems like I'm just writing about why I want to tear up a dance floor every once in a while. and that's probably not why you visit my blog.
SO! I admit what you suspect already- this is also a journal, and writing is an important way that I give shape to my thoughts. . so it is a journal for me. why then, make it public? I think, because in the same way as Silvie says showing your work at an art fair is like handing someone your heart on a plate with a fork and knife, I can know that essentially, I am a naked little worm, but it means nothing to be a naked little worm writing in a private journal. But when I give you a glimpse of the life that informs my interaction with clay, I expose myself to your rejection, and to your love. and that is frightening to me, so I'm challenged. and challenge is ultimately what I seek..
how do I balance my desire for understanding with the stated mission of this blog? shall it be as simple as this?: if I write what I consider truly useful kiln information, I will label and tag it clearly, and you can skip the rest. I will continue to post about energy issues, for that is, at root, the reason why I fire like I do, why I live like I do, and what is essential to our evolution as a species. occasionally, I will link to something truly meaningful like the zeitgeist movie addendum, or its Wiki, speaking of evolution. . for those of you who really visit this blog to read about the queer girl in portland, hi there! I will not be writing about my bedroom activities, but I promise a steady trickle of this kind of hot, and this kind of noise. cuz that's what I'm dancing to when I get free. fair enough?
Hello, new readers! you catch me at an interesting time- I had to postpone my firing and as spring welcomed me outside, I found myself spending entire weeks doing major work on this property that has been left to all manner of invasive plants for at least a decade. And rebuilding parts of the kiln. and rambling around being debaucherous. pretty much not making pots. I had just gotten back on the wheel when I fell off again, kicked in the pants by this amazing man who appeared and then dissappeared. productivity eludes me at the moment, which has the pleasant side effect of diverting me into forms for which I ordinarily have little patience, oil ewers and other things with attachments. I spent all day today making one teapot. (and flipping through blogs). this is pretty different from what I see on lots of people's blogs- hundreds of mugs, thousands of bowls, monoliths of clay, giant people-eating kilns. Sweet Jesus. my energy for that volume of exertion is shifting as I grow older. I had a lovely day making one teapot.
but disheveled days will soon be over. these time-consuming pieces are going into the "nanagama" at Mt Hood College, where we will reduce cool next weekend.. It has been a pleasant process so far: we collected all the wood from a student's property in White Salmon,WA, overlooking Mt Hood and Mt Adams. the whole crew came out, and we got to know each other (and each other's work ethics) before being thrown together in a firing.
