Marcus

It’s the last scheduled life drawing session for the year. The room was pretty much empty except for Andor, Jess, Amy, Marcus (our model), and myself. No complaints, I prefer the informality of familiarity that we have between everyone that was there.

It was a bit of a struggle to find a place where I felt comfortable with what was landing on the paper this morning, the connection between eyes and hands were fuzzy, but looking at the last few of this morning’s drawings, the results are still satisfying. To walk in and be able to put down a figure on paper was the goal of the year and that goals beenchecked off. Next year? Work the figure into interior domestic landscapes. Here’s to 2020...

Uniquely Common

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Essentially, what we do isn't all that uncommon, but what we bring to it... now that is what makes it uniquely uncommon.

It's hard to tell how seriously to take any design while it's going through the studio.

To "like" it carries so little weight as to be pretty much meaningless. On line it needs to draw eyes to even begin to have any perceived semblance of validity. Sitting on a shelf with other work in a gallery, it needs to pop out and ask to be picked. But loud isn't what I pull out of my kitchen cabinet or what I'm holding when I sit down at the end of the day. 

Yes, I like a loud design. It's what I click on and choose in the marketplace, but I prefer quiet and comfortable when I'm sitting down and having a moment. 

I'm not sure how to resolve this. 

I like to make loud things.

Hell, I might even be known for it. 

Dispite this tendency, I firmly believe that studio ceramic's primary role is to directly provide a pivot for the conscious mind, a means to down regulate our system into the moment. It's a stance rooted firmly in the formal notions of ambient ceramics, Ceramics that can iplay an active role in influencing the ambiance and geography of a personal space.

Babble

Babies bable through the phonetic library of sounds as they move towards the sonic forms of what's going to be their native tongue.

Is it incompetence or curiosity that takes us on this course or rather the likelyhood of a mix of the two? Is there some deeper relevance to why we stop babbling?

Is it because we've decided what to say or because we no longer are curious about possibly?

Pink WallFlower

When I look at this, I can feel the fleeting connection through a reciprocal gaze in my upper chest.

 

Thread of Conversation

The way you listen affects the way I speak...

The way I speak affects the way you listen...

Blue blue Blue

Unposted from 09/07/2016 with text added.

This was a beautifully simple project that went through the studio 3 years ago (2016) done in collaboration with my partner Jessica Fong. We only made a handful of these yunomi before we moved on and now, looking around, they are all gone.

As usual, I’m surprised that they disappeared so fast, they had a discordant look and feel to them. Maybe that was the attraction... The unfamiliar flower is the siren call of bees.

The nice thing about a successful project is that once it’s done, it doesn’t need to be done again. Time is better used to explore and grow, not rehash a minor victories.

States Become Traits

With enough frequency, states such as being left alone or being abused, can become a trait which patterns the way we manage our emotions and engrains the the neuro circuitry of the brain, becoming a pattern which we unconsciously gravitate to in order to help us manage our experience in the world. 

We drift to the familiar...

Week 17

Week 17 July 22nd -28th

A slow week with a few skipped days. The heat wasn’t even oppressive, but still, I managed to knock myself down by pruning roses all day as well as thinning out the trees over the walkways along the street. I have 12 healthy, mature, and unprunes Chinese Pistash that are now very much worked through as far as my pole saw can reach as well as 120 roses that are pruned and weeded. 

Jess and I moved the small updraft gas kiln over to the Hatch Space. Once it’s up and plumbed in, we’ll start burning it and test firing it. 

I keep daydreaming about color and paint. I daydream about setting up still lifes with a figure. I daydream about starting and finishing drawings and painting and all the marks in between.

Found a new podcast, “Art Grind”. Not sure how I missed this one. It’s a conversation podcast with 2D artists sharing their insights into a world of thought and actionthat’s, quite frankly, elements currently missing from American Acidemic Ceramics. I’m still bothered by what I’m seeing or by what I’m not seeing. I believe it has more to do with where I’m standing than what is actually there, but I rarely run across potters musing about the psychological effects of color, have any real insight into from, or even any interest in knowing themselves.

Masking Up Value

Today after work, Nico looked over my shoulder as I was pulling the tape off Of one of tonight's drawings and mentioned that the work was starting to look less like someone trying to draw something and more like someone drawing something, (the difference being the "trying"). When asked "what do you mean?" she answered while her finger, traced out the clean boarder around the drawing. "With all that white around it, it looks like a picture on a gallery wall. It looks like art is supposed to look."

earlier in the week, I had started working the practice of masking the edges of the drawings with tape. "You draw all messy, but it looks like it's supposed to be that way. Good job dad..."

In the past, the assumption was that work needed a plinth or a frame to be considered finished for presentation. With the drawings, I didn't see them as worthy candidates for presentation. Even though the pastels had been set down, when I looked at them, they didn't feel finished. Strangely, when I looked as what I posted on Instagram, they had a different feeling. The hunch was that the frame that Instagram provided

Now what I'm suspecting is that the work simply needs to be able to claim the space around it to be considered a presentable candidate. The juxtaposition of a simple drawing on a piece of paper with a clean boarder can make for a compelling object in itself.

In the past, a notorious test of an objects base value has been that if taken out of context of implied value, the object is found inexplicably on the ground, would the person that found it choose to put it in the garbage or keep it...

Time to start public posting.

First Day of Kindergarten

This is a unposted draft from October of 2017. Originally it was just 2 pictures waiting for text to give it some context. It’ been 9 months since they were uploaded and life have given them some of the context that I was needing. Too much context for just two pictures. There’s been a directional change that’s moved through our studio and I’m grabbing and oar and seeing where it can go. 

It’s already just 3 months shy of a year since the first night of figure drawing, and looking back, it had the feeling of heading off for kindergarten all over again, I had noidea what was happening, how this was supposed to work, who anyone was, and so much to learn. Like a toddler, I knew that my curiosity could change how I experienced the world around me.

It was an experience that I’ve secretly wanted to participate in for decades and didn’t know how to ask or who to ask. It's a bit tricky when there’s no one to ask though. We had no local drawing sessions open to the public. Everything that’s avalible is organized behind academic walls. So partnering up with Jess, we helped push to start our own group at the neighborhood Art League. A small group of us meet 3 times a month for 3 hour sessions at a time with a model. 

My original goals were to become competent and confident enough to sit down oncommand and be able to skillfully draw a convincing portrait. Admittedly, I’m not quite there yet... but like the first year of kindergarten, I can see a host of changes in my world that lay behind the drawings on the pages.  I can truthfully say that I am more confident. If someone asked me to sit down and draw them, I definitely would. Would it be good? Mmmmm, I don’t know, but I’d do it. I’ve made lots of new friends, and now I’m setting up new opportunities for group sessions as an advocate and organizer.

So the first two pictures are from the first session, the last is from one of the most recent sessions. All three are of the lovely Miss Brie. Without her collaboration, none of this would have ever gotten off the ground. So this post is pretty much a heads up. From here on out, there’s going to be a lot more talk about media other than just ceramics. There’s more to life that bread and butter, a whole lot more...

PS  I’d really like to thank my partner Jess for encouraging and helping facilitate this project. There are superhero’s all around us, she’s definitely one of them. Thanks Jess :)