Getting Started

A visitor to the studio looks at 3 of the vessels that I made last year here at the Tin Shop. The two large 'Bottomless Vessels to Hold Big Change' await some experimentation for color or perhaps encaustic transfers. It is both exciting and daunting to not yet know how I will finish them.

The idea of getting started this year seemed quite daunting. The clay was piled up. I had to start something.. But what?

I think that it may have been Paulus Beherenson who once said that pinch pots were a good place to start...?

Indeed, it was comforting and centering to make the few pinch pots now on the window sill. I look forward to scraping and burnishing them later today in preparation for either the barrel firing or the pit firing.

Using a familiar process of wrapping clay around a cardboard tube, this lady emerged after the pinch pots. She will be completely unglazed. So I will refine her details later today.

So although I felt a bit of anxiety about getting started, yesterday was a great day in the studio. And I am looking forward to today's studio time. I hope to discover who this woman is and what story she might be about to reveal...