Throwback Thursday. Except… it’s Monday.

I made this piece in early 2010.

For a very long time, my primary focus in ceramics was sculpture. I always made mugs and whatnot in between, but never really hunkered down and concentrated on a cohesive body of functional work until...well, until I finally had a reliable studio to work in (outside of a university setting) and started posting to Instagram regularly. I’ve made more work these past five or six years than I ever did when I was still a student, and it’s been one of my largest periods of growth as an artist. Because of this, I think it’s easy to scroll down my feed and assume that it holds the entirety of my ceramic career; there is a lot of evolution and honing happening there. In actuality, I had already been working in clay for over 15 years when I made my IG account in...2015? (Although I think that’s hard to tell by some of the early work I posted to my account, which looks so embarrassingly remedial to me now, since my area of focus was sculpture for so long, ha!) Which circles back to all the sculpture I was doing previously, including this piece. 

Such a huge chunk of my “language” in functional work (academic lingo alert!) comes from my past sculptural work. It might come across as odd to say, but I get the most inspiration for new work by looking at my past work. There is always some idea or direction I only played with briefly that I look back at later and go “Oh, yeah! I really need to revisit that!” The little beans I made that filled all the small divots on this pod-form is one of those things I’ve been thinking about recently, and how to bring that back into my functional work. 

They were all put into those little spaces unattached and free-moving (what a pain to glaze), and then two friends helped me bravely raku fire the piece, since it needed three people to lift it together with large, metal tongs out of the kiln. (Look up videos of the raku process if you’re unfamiliar) That’s where all those cracks came from. The piece surprisingly held together despite of them, for several years at least. I’ve moved across the country twice since it was made, and it ultimately didn’t survive. But that’s just another good reason to revisit those ideas, and perhaps make a new version of this one. Or a few....or a whole series. We’ll see. 

Found my old slides!

Well here’s a throwback for ya! Way back to what I think was my senior year of high school, so either 2002 or 2003, depending on which semester. Also entirely possible it was actually the year before that, I’m not 100% sure. It came up to my thigh and barely fit in the kiln. My art teacher, Mrs. Wimmer, had these slides made for me (yep, slides. Look it up, kids.. 🤣 I’m honestly a little surprised that was still customary in the early 2000s). I only just now had them digitized, and had to do some massive color correcting, which was not entirely the fault of the slides. * sigh * They still look a little off, but I did my best. 

A year or two before this, when we were learning to make a coil pot, I was feeling impatient with the rolling, the scoring, the slipping, the smoothing, repeat, repeat, repeat... I started grabbing small wads of clay and smooshing them together, leaving heavy texture on the outside, and smoothing everything together on the inside. “Does this still count as a coil pot?”, I asked Mrs. Wimmer.

“Sure!” 

Awesome. This felt much faster, and had texture! OooooOoOoooh! I made a pitcher, and a tiny cup to match. It was heavy and clunky, and my mom loved it. She still has it. 

Eventually that “coil” method morphed into me flattening out bits of clay and squeezing them together, then gradually stacking those bits on top of one another as I smoothed down the inside to connect them all and form a vessel. I did it to make hair for a bust project, (my sister in law still has that one. One of the family dogs used to growl at it as it walked past) and then finally one of my pots just kept getting bigger, so I just kept going, working within the hour-or-so increments of a high school art class. I’d spray it down and wrap it up at the end of the day, and continue the next day, for what I feel like was months, but I don’t know how accurate that perception is. 

I went back to this technique off and on in college. One of my first “biomorphic” coil pots used the same method, and I raku fired it (risky biznis!). Mom has that one too, and I actually still really like it. I’d like to make another now that I have the means to raku again. 

This texture has refined a bit since this high school pot, and I don’t use it often, but it is a part of this vase I recently made.

Now when I use it, it’s on top of a form I’ve already constructed instead of also serving as the means of construction, and I take care to make sure none of the petal-like bits would be easily snapped if handled. 

That huge, shaggy teal vase from high school was given to the mother of a former long-term boyfriend in 2014. I had moved with it across the country twice at that point. Many of those jagged edges had gotten snapped off, and I was about ready to be done with the thing. Or at least hide it in the garage or something. But she loved it, and I was glad to give it a home. I have no idea if she kept it after I was no longer with her son. 

I don’t really have a sweeping conclusion to all this. It’s just nice having such an early documentation of my work that shows a starting point to such a continuous thread for me, and thought I’d share it. I would like to show more of this sort of timeline soon, because I love when you can see such clear evolution in someone’s work. I’m always fascinated to see it in others, and it can be helpful to show that ideas don’t just get pulled out of thin air. I’m thinking of making it a video (a sort of artist talk) but that’s always a lot of work, so we’ll see.  

One mug a day

Every once in a while, someone will comment on Instagram or Facebook that they admire my work ethic, and I’m always completely surprised and confused at how they came to any such conclusion. "WHAT work ethic?" I think to myself. Do they have any idea how much time I spent scrolling on my phone, or just staring into space in between the time I spent making those few mugs I just posted? I suppose it’s easy to seem like an incredibly productive human on social media without even trying. The reality is, I’ve always had an exceptionally hard time getting started on tasks, let alone finishing them in a timely fashion (thanks to ADHD, which hijacks the ‘executive function’ part of the brain. But that’s a whole n’other story). Even when it’s a task I genuinely enjoy, like ceramics, it can sometimes feel like punching through a brick wall just to get going. Even now, I’m writing this instead of starting a new mug, but I’ll try not to beat myself up about it. (I mean, this counts as work too, right?) This has been a problem my whole life, but now, chronic procrastination has caused me to slowly fall more and more behind in my work since I quit my job at MAC cosmetics in 2018 and went full time into clay. The more I procrastinated, the less work I’d have ready to sell before the following months bills were due. Less work means I’d have less money for necessities, and therefore less time to make a new body of work to sell before what money I did have ran out and bills were due yet again. Sometimes I’d manage to play catch-up, but the grind would catch up with me, and sap all my mental energy. Then back to square one again. 

For over a year I have almost obsessively searched for a new routine to make things easier and a little more foolproof. For years I used to work late at night, but the lack of sunlight makes me feel like I have seasonal depression, and also gives me unpleasant flashbacks to all those college all-nighters. I’ve tried starting later in the day, but this only zaps all momentum, and causes a whole day of doing nothing. For a long time I used the pomodoro method of setting a timer to work for 25 minutes, then taking a five minute break and repeat. That one stuck for a long time, but eventually I started tweaking the length of time I’d work vs break (longer work time, longer breaks, shorter work time, shorter breaks...) and it tapered back off to taking breaks whenever I wanted. Now I’m overly distracted by my phone all over again, or non-urgent tasks around the house. (Like organizing all of my markers by color. Super important!)

It’s been a long, slow process for me to realize that getting up early has a significant, positive impact on my mental health. Now, if I’m in bed past 6am, I’ve ‘slept in’.  It’s proving to be another long, slow process for me to accept that I will never be a person who can focus and work a solid eight or more hours a day. On anything. My brain just doesn’t function that way, and honestly, most of yours don’t either. (There are studies to support that) But it’s like my brain knows this, and the rest of me is still fighting it. Why is it so hard for us to give ourselves a little compassion and self-understanding? 

So, as a compromise between my brain and the rest of my ‘self’, I made a commitment to construct just one woodland mug a day, most days, until the end of days! ...ok, maybe it’s not quite that strong of a commitment. It might not even last until the end of the year, or the end of the summer for that matter. I’ve already had many missed days, and had to skip several in a row as other momentary priorities had to be dealt with. But for the most part, over the last few weeks, this is the most successful routine I’ve set for myself in a long time. But I also fear that this will likely be just another temporary solution that will fall by the wayside, no matter how well it’s currently working. Aren’t these seemingly unnecessary mental struggles fun?! 

Nonetheless, yesterday I finished mug 20 out of my goal of 25, and I’m pretty proud of myself. Even 20 mugs would be the largest batch (of that particular type of mug in my "line", so to speak) I’ve made in one go in maybe close to two years. This 20 of 25 made doesn’t include the glazing process. The woodland mugs take me on average around four hours to make, but then they need to be bisque fired, and then glazed, which takes me about another 1.5 - 2 hours per mug. This is a good reason I should stop being so envious of people who seem to constantly crank out large bodies of work every month, when generally, half of their process is done in the throwing of the piece. But alas, not comparing ourselves to others is an ongoing struggle for most of us. (Anyone know where I left all that self compassion I mentioned?  *checks in couch cushions*)

But if I can make my ‘one mug a day’ method part of my morning routine, I could theoretically be done with it before noon. Then I’d have the rest of my day to glaze work, or make new forms, write drafts for this blog, or tend to whatever other looming household or business obligations need tending to. (Oh gawd... it’s almost tax time...) Or sometimes that one mug may be all I need to do for the day, and I can then guiltlessly fall down the YouTube rabbit hole of cat and dog videos. Or better yet, the far superior yet underrated bird videos!

I guess I’ll just have to see where this takes me. I will miss more days. I will get sick of the mugs and need to switch it up for a week here and there for maybe an incense burner a day, or a small vase a day, plate, bowl, planter...or *gasp* maybe an actual, solid day off every once in a while? Maaaaaaybe even... one day off a week?? Hoooo, slow down, killer! Let’s not get carried away with ourselves! It’s not like regular time off is essential to avoiding burnout, and only makes your work time more productive and enjoyable or someth— what’s that? Oh..it does?? Ok well uh....I guess I could try that. Like, maybe as an experiment or something.

But right now I really do need to get to work. 

Heres a few of the mugs I’ve been working on as part of my “one mug a day” these past few weeks.