Potters share the pleasure received from seeing a shelf of finished pots waiting to be fired, or a kiln opening brimming with pots still warm from that fire.   I work for weeks and can hold the tangible product of my labor in my hands.  There’s no ambiguity of accomplishment.  For better or worse, I have objects that describe my work.

My table full of pots drying is an exhilarating sight.  At this stage of the process, I usually don’t want to stop the making- it’s a time when I have more ideas for the forms that I’ve just finished, but it’s time to glaze and fire, completing this cycle.

“It took me into my hands, to creating something real,” is a statement from an interview with Terry Tempest Williams on the NPR program, “Being.”

“The value of art is in the observer, said the painter, Agnes Martin.  “When you find out what you like, you’re really finding out about yourself.  Beethoven’s music is joyous. If you like his music, you know that you like to be joyful. People who look at my painting say that it makes them happy, like the feeling when you wake up in the morning. And happiness is the goal, isn’t it?”  (for Stefan)

http://paintingresearch.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/at-work-agnes-martin/

I’ve been spending time rereading old STUDIO POTTER magazines

From Joe Spano, Studio Potter Vol. 13 # 2

“I live with many of [Joan’s] pots.  Some of them I handle every day.  They illuminate my life in daily ways, quiet and unremarked pleasures.  Others stop me in my tracks.  They are the master’s slap, the laugh of god.  They tell me that it’s wise to pay attention.  I value both, as both have gifts to give if I’m in the receiving vein.”

And then:

“I came to love the handmade pot because I saw in it what I now see in every pot that’s made with love:  the obvious, it has been handled.  Physical decisions have been made over every inch of its surface.  Countless split-second calculations, corrections, compromises, challenges, surrenders, and triumphs have led to the existence of this piece of earth in this exact form.  So when I hold it, it interests me.  It has something to say to me.  Not intending to teach, it cannot help but do so.”

Handmade pots do tell me that it’s wise to pay attention- to the pot in my hand, the coffee in the cup, the prism rainbows on my kitchen wall, the day quietly beginning.