Before this August I would have said that ceramics were the plates that you keep in your cabinet, things to eat off of or drink out of. I would have said that ceramics were the vases and coffee mugs sold in gift shops. Especially those horsehair pots sold in so many southwestern gift shops the ones that neither look like horses, nor hair, nor horsehair, but look like squiggly lines on white china with a very, very high price tag. I would have said ceramics were those vases and pots in-between the paintings at art galleries and museums. The dictionary defines ceramics as " pots and other articles made from clay hardened by heat." This August I started taking a Ceramics course at the community college and it is quite possibly one of the most life transforming things I have ever done, right up there with my husband and children.
Now I will tell you that ceramics is everything. It has inspired me at the age of 32 to go to school (finally) and work on attaining a degree. In the spring I am enrolled in a full course load of classes. None of the norms yet, no english or math for me I need some more time to break into the whole idea and feeling of being in school again especially with two children. My degree is in fine arts and I enrolled in "Introduction to Cultural Anthropology" as well as "Computer Integrated Systems" "Communication 100" all of which are required. I also enrolled in "Ceramics 2" much to my academic advisers annoyance (it's not required for my degree) and "Tai Chi". I am really looking forward to it and I don't think that would have happened at all if it wasn't for ceramics.
Ceramics is this new way to view the world. I find myself looking at concrete shapes in public, plates at restaurants, and structural things. I think about the ways that I could make them or reproduce them or improve upon them, shapes that I could incorporate and techniques I could use to make them. It ties me to our unified past as a human. We have been making pottery on a wheel for 6-8k years. Which is amazing and gives me chills when I think about it. Making pottery itself is even older with some of the oldest pieces dating 11-12k years ago. Ceramics and pottery give me a connection to humanity as a whole. There is nothing in my mind more simply human than to make some form of pottery. Even children during play will create their own bowls from leaves, sticks, mud, and any other kind of material they can get a hold of. I know that what I feel and think when I'm making a piece is something that many people before me have felt themselves.
I hope through this blog to show you pottery and ceramics through my eyes, share what I learn, my joys as well as some of my failures.
-Vala
Artist, Homeschooling Mom, College Student, Gamer.
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