Mud Slinging Pyromania and Other Creative Endeavors

So, some of you may be wondering where the name of this blog comes from... I'm surprised myself I haven't written about it yet. Among other creative endeavors, I throw pots. I have to say that traditional drawing and pottery are really my first loves. I've tried to give up one and then the other to "get more focused" but I can't really live without either.

I'm sure I have some kind of disorder this way.... a pathological need to make stuff. I can't help it. And when I'm not able to do so, I honestly go a little crazy. I'm not kidding about the crazy, here.  I feel heavy and depressed, slightly useless and very emotional. I can relieve this by the simple act of doodling which I tend to do at inappropriate times. I'm not sure it's a good idea to draw a "love sucks" tattoo in the middle of a business meeting, but I honestly can't help it. It's biological for me. But it's better if I can spend some real time creating. And that's what you need to make pots, time...

Throwing pots, or "mud-slinging" is a very visceral art form. That makes it very therapeutic as well. In my book, it should count as exercise. There is a LOT of lifting and pushing and shoving and basically muscling the clay around until it forms something recognizable. My boxes of clay run 50 pounds each and I haul them around the studio, most of the time with ease. I'm proud of that because I'm freakishly strong after all. Maybe that's why I want a Viking to call my own... I don't want to feel like I might break my partner.

In college, I had a clay class with a woman named Edith Freeman. She is a well-known artist in this region and her primary medium was woodcut printing. Beautiful, intricate work. She was in her 80's when I knew her and has since passed away. She was truly wonderful. I do miss her. I remember one day, she brought in homemade brownies and she offered me one. I said I really shouldn't because I was on another terminal diet (that's another blog topic), but she put her arm around me and said... "Honey, you'll be so glad you were sturdy when you get older, you don't want to be a frail little thing who can't work." Of course at the time, I didn't fully appreciate being called "sturdy", but now, like she said, I'm very grateful for it.

Well, let's get back on topic... There are a lot of things that happen between carrying the clay and firing, but I will save those for later posts... Firing is really where the "pyromaniac" part of the BLOG comes in. There are a lot of ways to fire pots, but the most interactive is really Raku. If you're not familiar with Raku, it's an amazing process and as a potter, you have to be prepared to lose some work in the firing. It's like natural selection for clay. Raku is very hard on a pot. Basically after firing the pot in the bisque stage (the first firing, which is not a full firing), you glaze and then fire the pot again. This is true for most firing techniques, but in Raku, there is a critical difference.

Basically, you second fire the pot to somewhere around 2200 degrees Fahrenheit (okay, that was hard to spell!). Then you fling open the door of the kiln and while the pot is red hot AND taking care not to light yourself on fire in the process, you grab the pot with special and very nifty tongs and basically throw it in some combustible material like straw or sawdust. Upon doing this, said combustible material, immediately COMBUSTS, hence the name combustible... I actually just like saying combustible. It sounds kind of scientific and smart. I use a steel garbage can with a lid to hold the straw or sawdust and said pot. The garbage can doesn't melt and straw or sawdust burn nicely and they're cheap and easy to find.

Once again, you must avoid lighting yourself on fire at this point... It's very exciting isn't it? Instead, you throw more combustible items into the garbage can, over the pot, then quickly put the lid on and let the the whole thing 'reduce'. I'll explain reduce at some point too, but I don't want this post to be too technical. Suffice it to say, it's a bit like 'simmering' in cooking terms. When you feel as if the combustible material has burned down enough, this is mostly by instinct, you then remove it from the container. The straw or sawdust should, at this point, be mostly ash. While the pot is still relatively hot, you plunge it into a bucket of water. This sets the reduction (don't worry about understanding what that means) and is called quenching. What's really important is that if the pot hasn't broken yet, it probably will when you quench it. But if it survives, the results are usually very dramatic, like the process itself.

Typically, Raku glazes are metallic or oil-slicked in nature and feel very ancient and mystical to me... like something you'd find in ta wizard's chamber or Atlantis. I don't have a good example to show you yet, but I plan on trying to light myself and a few friends on fire at some point this summer. I'll post pics when we get around to it. You cannot Raku fire by yourself. It's just not smart. Although, I have to say I've been tempted... see the definition of the term "pyromaniac". I actually have so much fun firing that I experiment with it all the time. It really is surprising that I haven't, at the very least, burned off my eyebrows yet. But knock on wood, they're still intact.

Now, I have to admit that trying to light myself on fire by doing Raku, may be a subconscious attempt to get rescued by a beefy fireman. In fact, where is a big fireman when you need one? Well, there you go. That's why the blog is called "Mud-Slinging Pyromaniac" and yep, that's me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go sling some mud. Lighting myself on fire... well, that'll wait a day or two.

 (shameless plug coming at ya: http://www.cafepress.com/naughtyviking.423246866)

Conversations With Dull People

In Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince, the movie that is, there is a peculiar hourglass in Professor Slughorn's office. I can't remember if it's actually in the book. I'll have to listen to the book again to find out. Yes, I love audiobooks and the reader for the Harry Potter series is magnificent, truly.

The sand in the hourglass speeds up or slows down dependent upon the quality of the conversation. This got me thinking about the relativity of time. I'm sure the intent in the magical world of Harry Potter is to speed up time when the conversation is dull and slow it down when the conversation is brilliant (there's a little English turn of phrase for ya).

So, why in the real world does it work exactly the opposite? Why is it that conversations with dull people seem to last f-o-r-e-v-e-r while at the same time, conversations you wish would not end, are over before you know it?

Quite frankly, this is a dilemma because there are so many more dull people than fascinating. I mean honestly, why is that? I don't know where I fit really. I'm not arrogant enough to consider myself brilliant. I have a fair IQ, and I try to be clever, but mostly, I just go where my brain takes me. Usually that means the weather. You'd think that most people are somewhere in the middle as well, right? Not in my experience. I know it's a terrible thing to say? I'm not trying to be mean. I honestly think it's because we just don't have the time these days to figure out if someone is really interesting or not. Instead, we conduct short little conversations in passing and even though they are only minutes long, sometimes seconds... they seem to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r. The types of conversations we have time for include dull topics like the weather (there it is again) or what the price of gas is these days. Honestly, who cares. The weather is the weather and we don't have any control over the price of gas. The worst part is, I get sucked into these topics all the time and sometimes I even start conversations this way. ARGH!

So it seems, I'm a really dull person as well. And here's the thing, the more attractive the person is, the more dull I get. The other day in the elevator, a handsome man said good morning to me and I nearly choked on my tongue. Why is that? Then of course I spent the rest of the day beating myself up because I was so dull... or idiotic might be a better term.

(Another shameless plug: http://www.cafepress.com/naughtyviking.423253087)

Wouldn't it be wonderful instead to sit around talking about art or new discoveries in science? Politics, the environment, the relativity of time or even talking about cars would be much more interesting than the weather. Now, there is an exception to "everything's more interesting than the weather" rule. When the weather discussion is pertinent to other aspects of the conversation, like "you've chose to hike the Appalachian Trail" for instance, and are concerned about how the weather will affect your hike, then okay!

What I've discovered is that most of the truly fascinating conversations I have are actually with children. I don't have any kids of my own, but I run across these miniature people occasionally and they truly are fascinating. They ask the most amazing questions and come up with truly incredible conclusions about things. I'll never forget about a little girl I met in the post office one day. She was carrying a small box with her. It had holes in the top which suggested she was keeping some kind of creature in it. I asked her about the box and she said it was her pet grasshopper. She went on to tell me all about him, what he liked to eat and the conversations she'd had with him. Let me tell you, that grasshopper wasn't dull

I guess if a grasshopper can be interesting... surely I can be. Or at least, surely I can keep trying... and that brings me back to the relativity of time. Certainly it's all about perception, right? When we're enjoying ourselves, time only seems to go faster. When we're not, it slows down. I think J.K. Rowling had it right, it should be the other way around. So, maybe the lesson is that we must immerse ourselves completely and totally in all of our conversations. Maybe by doing that, we can discover the "fascinating" in every seemingly dull person. By doing that, maybe we can speed up or slow down the passage of time. That's silly, right? I mean it's all about perception... or maybe it really is magic.
L

http://www.cafepress.com/naughtyviking.430447262

The Unicorn in the Room

So, I've recently had to come to terms with the fact that I don't 'fit in'.  Although it's something I've dealt with all my life, my mid-life crisis is changing my attitude about it... and in a good way! No longer am I trying to fit in, but instead I am embracing who I am. It really hit me the other day during a business meeting. As I was sitting with people who were talking about driving to kid's baseball games, watching sports and sending kids to college, I realized that I was the odd man, I mean woman, out. I do my best to understand their perspective and share conversation, but for the most part, my life & my attitudes are very very different from theirs.

For instance, I believe in unicorns... and fairies and angels. Basically I believe in almost anything that sounds absolutely impossible. This sounds a little bit like my 'second childhood' has pushed me over the edge of sanity, right? But I'm as sane as the next person. I just choose to believe that magic is real. Why? Because it's a beautiful idea, isn't it? It's beautiful to think that something miraculous exists beyond us. It's also a great source of inspiration.

Let me tell you how I got here. As an artist, I've always been blessed with a wild imagination. I was an only child and from the time I was a little girl I daydreamed about fantastical characters and alternate universes. I particularly believed in wizards and unicorns, gnomes & fairies, elves & dragons. Sounds like the makings for the ultimate fantasy geek, right? Well, I don't actually attend Comicon, but I do think it would be fun.

Here's the thing. I didn't live in a house where my parents read me bedtime stories. In fact, it was just my mom & I unless I was staying with my grandparents, and none of them read to me. In fact, I can't remember one instance of anyone reading to me. I didn't have any early reader books. The first memory I have of someone reading to me was my second grade teacher, and he was really good at it. It's probably the reason why I love listening to audiobooks now. It's my indulgence. Some women like pedicures... I like a great audiobook read by someone who is really good at it.

So, I have to wonder where these imagined characters came from. If I didn't have any knowledge of fairy tales, how could I just know about fairies? I don't know the answer to that. But I do vividly remember moments where I knew it was true. For instance, I used to play at my grandparent's hobby farm. There was a shallow ditch running across the pasture and I loved to sit in the ditch and watch what passed by. There were dragonflies, snails & earthworms, crickets and birds, a plethora of tiny creatures that most people didn't notice at all. I would build boats for the snails out of milk weed pods complete with leafy sails and set them on their course. Looking back, I sure hope they made it safely to wherever I sent them. But I had a clear picture in my head of all of them communicating with each other, assisted by tiny fairies when they got in trouble and off to lands where they could see dragons and ride unicorns.

That imagination is alive and well today. Thank goodness. It's always been there, but it sort of woke back up when I started reading the Harry Potter stories a few years ago. What a magical and wondrous book! A friend recently said that J.K. Rowling was divinely inspired. She suggested that there was real magic happening in the writing of that story. She's a friend who believes as well, thank goodness for her. And I agree.

Artists and Art Historians have talked for centuries about divine inspiration. People accept the term without really thinking about it. But I'm here to tell you, it's absolutely true. I've felt it. There are moments in my studio, whether I am drawing or throwing pots, that I forget myself... even forget what I am doing and just work. It's not like I'm possessed or anything dark like that. It's a sort of stepping outside of myself. It's like I can understand the clay, or the pencil. Like the medium just works itself. I can tell when it's not happening and during those times it almost always pays to get out of the studio. In the inspired moments, the magical moments, the ideas create themselves. The forms create themselves. I am just tool in this. But I am always fascinated by it. And I always thank the fairies when the project is complete, because I truly believe they were in the room.

So there you go. I believe in fairies & other crazy things. So be it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to replace my DVD player so I can watch Lord of the Rings tonight. ;)
L