Counting Chickens Before They Hatch

Well, I did it.

I pissed off the Kiln Gods.

I was on track to meet my goal of donating 2 dozen bowls for the Empty Bowls Project here in town and I made an offhand joke about the kiln gods either being angels or assholes in response to the fact I was going to have to refire 9 bowls because the glaze pinholed.

And then the load with my bowls in it had a kiln failure.

Not just a kiln failure, but a complete "melt the socket and plug at the wall" failure. This is at the makers space that I am a member of, so it also affected several other people with work destined for other purposes as well as the Empty Bowls event. It figures. But then it is never a given that the kiln gods will cooperate as you plan, so it is what it is. I have a dozen bowls that are made and while I am hoping that I can reach my 2 dozen goal, I will have to be satisfied that I at least got a dozen bowls done. That means that when things actually do turn out, I will have a lot of extra bowls. Everyone in my family is going to get several bowls for Christmas. But that is not a bad thing. I am going to continue to make bowls in the upcoming weeks so that I can keep working towards bigger bowls, which has been a struggle for me. Pulling forms taller than 12" is something I need to work on.

On the "self care" front, I have decided that over the next couple weeks I am going to spend a heck of a lot less time with toxic things such as Facebook, and a lot more time painting, writing and exploring both the outside world and the inside world. I am going to Syracuse in a bit so that I can finally start acting on my desire to travel. An opportunity came up for me to go on a trip with my husband and while I usually stay home to "hold down the fort", this time I decided that the fort can manage itself. I have made excuses that subconsciously have been an attempt at "comfort". I have realized that getting out of my comfort zone is something that does not happen as often as it should. So I am going to Syracuse.

I am also taking along books on writing haiku and poetry. I have always loved haiku but have gotten away from it since my kids were born. I think it is time to get back. I start every morning with writing my three pages of morning pages, so adding a haiku writing time would not be too much trouble. Do you have a writing practice? I always hesitate to say "writing practice" because I feel it puts it at a level that is lofty and precious. Writing practices should be neither. They should be awkward, honest, painful at times and without expectations and rules. But the vulnerability is frightening too. So for many years I have put it aside. At this stage in my life I am trying to connect more with my inside world than my outside world, so writing is as important as any other form of expression.

And so it is. What is expected is not always what is going to happen. That might be the most important thing to remember.

Pottery As Meditation And Engagement

I have been throwing a lot of bowls on the pottery wheel as a method of meditation and engagement lately.

After an on/off again relationship with the craft, it seems to me that the fact I keep coming back to it over a 30 year period is something I need to listen to. I tend to be bad at listening to signals the universe throws at me until they hit me square in the forehead.

I can't claim to be proficient or professional in the medium, but there is something about it that keeps bringing me back. The kids are grown and on their own, so I have the time to explore and spend more time getting it figured out. Lately clay is allowing me to find a way to contribute and give back to community causes in a very real way through our local Empty Bowls event.

Empty Bowls is a grassroots worldwide initiative that addresses hunger worldwide by focusing locally. Wichita has had a version of that for a couple years now. It is a very popular event where the community can come make bowls--even if they have never made anything in clay before--and those bowls are then sold on the event day. Potters also contribute bowls. You can buy a bowl at the event and it is filled with soup. You get a bowl, a full belly and the good feeling that you helped give to the food bank here in town. A win win situation.  I have wanted to contribute for quite some time and this year I decided to learn to throw a bowl on the wheel and pledged 2 dozen bowls for the event. It has been great practice throwing bowls! I have really enjoyed myself. Here are a couple bowls I made that are destined for the event.

I am a member of a makers space here in Wichita called MakeICT and they have a ceramics room with wheels and a kiln. All I have to do is buy clay. If  I want to use glazes different from the ones they have, then I purchase and use those. I recently attended a 3 day workshop by John Britt that taught glaze making for mid fire clays and I am looking forward to making my own glazes in the upcoming months. We currently only have three wheels--one that I actually like to use--so it can be a challenge to throw during busy times. I have discovered that I am fortunate that during the day when everyone else is at work, the ceramics room is all mine (most of the time). This has been an amazing time to just sit quietly and focus on the act of throwing the clay. It is an amazing way to just slow down, focus and "be".

Throwing requires being aware of the movement of the clay, the movement of your body and the actions of the wheel. It is frustrating at first, but once you learn how to center the clay, it becomes an exercise in creative choices. I love this.

Throwing on the wheel and making functional pottery has also helped me think about our throw away culture and how our conveniences are wrecking the environment. I have been trying to eat at places that actually serve on real plates, use real glasses and silverware and I have to admit it hasn't been a success all the time. It is surprising to see how accustomed I have been to eating at places that enable consumers to generate a lot of waste and plastic. I am trying to be more mindful of it and I am choosing to prepare and consume more meals at home and focus on reducing plastic when I buy things. That is a bit of a slow process for me, unfortunately. I am FOREVER forgetting my reusable bags at home when I go grocery shopping! So my goal is to REMEMBER. I don't know if it is possible to have zero impact because everything exerts a cost on the environment, but I am working on doing the little things that have impact both for the environment and my community. Pottery has helped me work towards this. It has also provided a form of relaxation and thoughtfulness.

I am thankful for the opportunities to create and contribute.

What Matters: An experiment.

Social media has become pretty toxic the past couple years--especially since the election. Not only has it been a platform for bullies and bullshit, but it has also come to light that companies like Facebook have sold our personal data to the highest bidder. That is both scary and irritating. 

As a result, I have been trying to engage with social media in a more deliberate manner. I have also been trying to become aware of when I am being manipulated so that I can shut it off. The fact that what I look at on Amazon pops up on Facebook is also alarming. That shows that data is being shared for profit. I am a number. But the idea for blogging is a bit easier to engage with, even though it is supposedly no longer as popular as it once was. Oh well, I never followed fads anyway. This is for me. 

In the upcoming week, my goal is to do more FACE TIME with REAL PEOPLE. Actual face time. I am slowly moving from Facebook to Instagram, which is owned by Facebook but appears to be less saturated with bull at this time. That could easily change as people move away from Facebook. I am a visual person, so Instagram is a bit more fitting. But I am limiting my time on it as well in favor of reading and getting back to some creative activities like pottery.

With the kids grown and on their own, I have been trying to figure out exactly what to do with my time, and it has come back around to pottery. I started working with pottery or some form of ceramics when I was a teenager and it seems that I put it down and then circle back to it again. This time I found a makers space with a wheel and kiln and I have spent afternoons making bowls for Empty Bowls, a worldwide charity. Our local one benefits the food bank here in town. I committed to 2 dozen bowls and as of right now, I am three shy of getting my goal. By the time the event rolls around, I will have my 2 dozen completed. There is something about the wheel that has captured my attention. I am still working on perfecting my throwing, but it has been fun to see how far I have come. My eventual goal is to have a wheel at home. I was given two small kilns recently and eventually I want to have a studio either close to home or in the garage. I am trying to visualize it and manifest it in any way possible. 

I was going to title this post "Things That I Am Avoiding", but that sounds pretty negative. Instead I am taking some time to figure out what is going on in my life and how I can spend my time in a more meaningful way. What matters? That has been my big question for myself. And the scary part is that most of the time, I don't have a definite answer. I figured by the time I got to 53, I would know something about which direction I should take. I don't. I have found that I have so many interests and I dabble in so much that I have not perfected one particular thing except my drawings. Now I am trying to figure out "Who am I" now that my kids are grown and I have time. That "time" always seemed so far in the future. Now it is here and I am a bit adrift. 

I have an upcoming trip to Syracuse, New York planned and I am pretty excited that I actually took the initiative and said I wanted to go instead of staying around Wichita. Traveling is something I have always wanted to do and now I have no engagements that require my presence here in town, so I am going to be more open to travel. Has anyone been to Syracuse? I have never been to that part of the United States and I am looking forward to it. It will be a sightseeing trip for me, a business trip for my husband. I have been looking at the museums and things to do there. The flying part is not my favorite, but it will be good to get there quickly and start exploring. I have a friend that moved to the area, so she is going to show me around at least one of the days. I am searching out pottery studios and art galleries in the area also. And bookstores. I always hit at least one bookstore while I am anywhere. That said, the thrift stores have been an excellent source for books that are already on my Amazon wish list. I have been surprised. The hotel we are in has a fireplace in the room, so nights will be spent reading in front of the fireplace. That is exciting to me! I want a fireplace in our house! 

Fall is supposedly here and I have had a restless 2018. I am looking ahead to making opportunities and making art for the remainder of the year. What are your plans? 

Slow mornings

copyright Rhonda Davis

I have a billion things to do today and zero motivation, so I figured I would take advantage of the day to hang out at home and make a dent in some "me" time. It has rained pretty consistently the past week or two, so maybe that is contributing to my tiredness. I do love the rain though. Yesterday I was at the library when it started to get grey and rainy, so I took my book pile over to the large windows that are an amazing feature of our new downtown library and read while it rained. Pretty satisfying. I realized that I have the luxury of being able to do this more often and I don't take advantage of it as much as I should. That will change.

I have been working pretty hard to throw at least 24 bowls on the pottery wheel for the upcoming "Empty Bowls" fundraiser here in Wichita and I am at a point where 9 bowls are drying and I have hogged all the space on the drying racks that I can without feeling guilty, so now I am waiting. I will be 12 bowls short of my goal to contribute 2 dozen this year, but I am going to throw 6 a day for the next two days so I can hit my mark before it is time to present them to the event. Our makerspace potters are contributing bowls as a group, so this will be a fun thing to do.

It has also been good practice and an exercise in realizing that I am not cut out to be a production potter. Throwing 12 (3-4pound) balls of clay completely wipes me out. After 10, I am prone to having silly accidents that usually end up wiping out at least 2 of the 12, so my new "normal" is going to be 6 at a time. Definitely a do-able goal and it ends up letting me throw more consistent bowls of better quality. But as any potter knows, it is not a bowl until it is sitting on the table, finished. So much can go wrong between the first bisque firing and the last glaze fire that it is unwise to count your chickens before they hatch. The Kiln God is a persnickity little jerk sometimes and it is always a crapshoot as to how the final piece will turn out. I have to admit, there is something magical about the process and it is extremely satisfying to eat out of something that you made from a ball of clay. I think that connection to the process is one of the things we are missing in America. We are such "end use consumers" that we have lost track of HOW things are made and WHO makes them. I don't forsee us going back to a completely handmade culture and there are times I like the convenience, but there is something to be said for handmade. This includes simple actions like writing, drawing and cooking. These things helps us connect to ourselves in basic ways that mass produced items just cannot.

The Art of Baking as a Retreat from Life

Lately, the world, the United States specifically, is in chaos. People cannot seem to just figure out how to embrace the differences and get along or are trying to blame others for things they have not participated in. If some people didn't get their way in the election, then they are bound and determined to bring the whole nation down as an attempt to throw a tantrum to get their way. The funny thing is that while people want to protest in huge numbers, once they leave that little event, they do nothing to go about making their corner of the world a better place.

 THAT is where the change starts. In your own little corner of the world. And then it grows outward from there. How? Volunteer at a soup kitchen or a food distribution point. Take a meal to an elderly shut in. Smile at people on the street, no matter how different they are from you. Trust me, they are more like you than you can imagine.

At this point, the mental exhaustion of watching the childish posts and games on both social and mainstream media has me a bit exhausted and not feeling very optimistic for the future. Although I know humans have always had periods of unrest (thinking the 60's in the United States), I feel a need to disconnect and turn homeward to nurse my mental fatigue from the world. My method of release is baking. So, in the upcoming weeks and months, I will be highlighting some of my favorite soup and bread recipes. I will be sharing stories of makers. I will be sharing stories of connections.

I hope you enjoy the upcoming posts. Remember that positive change happens with you, not politicians or the media. Make connections, ask questions, start positive conversations.