To
some degree there have always been both avenues toward success/survival
for all artists/craftsmen who have tried to survive by their
creativity.
I remember when I met David. I was doing an art
fair in Toledo and though I couldn't see them behind my booth, I could
hear some really good musicians -- a hammered dulcimer and a guitarist
-- who were hired by the art fair to provide ambiance.
When
they stopped playing and I had no customers, I ventured around behind
my booth and found the two musicians taking a break. I introduced myself
and complimented the guitarist -- David. After some conversation, I
asked him what he did for a living. "Music", he said.
I felt
kind of silly. I mean, for 15-20 years to that point, I had been making a
living as a potter in a sub-culture, niche market "Wild West" of art
fairs that had developed as a work-around to the twin gatekeepers of
academia and gallery.
Why it hadn't occurred to me that there
were parallel means of making a living from other creative pursuits and
their gatekeepers, I don't know. Probably because I worshipped the world
of music and the musicians that the gatekeepers of record labels and
radio had presented me. At that point in time I was only a decade or so
into collecting more homemade music and meeting more and more musicians
of a decidedly NOT pop kind. At that point, though, even those musicians
I was learning more about were still the "product" of record labels and
contracts and distribution infrastructure. It was just smaller labels
like Red House, SugarHill, and others.
But David was completely
independent. He played in (at that point) four different bands, had his
own recording studio, and would accompany just about any musician in
need at a gig or recording studio.
Now we're all Davids. We're
all finding our own way. Many of our favorite musicians are those we
find on youtube. The Universities told some of our favorite
authors/writers that they weren't any good. Thankfully some of them
were simply obligate writers who couldn't not write.
In this
digital age the braver among those rejected by academia and publishing
houses took a chance. Even if those educated in our Universities to
have contempt for the simple and the beautiful had rejected them,
perhaps they could cast their bread on the water of the internet and see
if there were any souls among the 4 billion with computers and kindles
and phones out there whom they might touch and be touched by. And they
found us. And we found them.
There will always be gatekeepers.
And there will always be a majority who will look to them to tell us who
and what we are supposed to like and dislike.
And there will
always be obligate artists who do what we do. The shift is that there is
now a much broader path around the gatekeepers.
Sometimes the gatekeepers want a piece of some of those self-made artists, and agreeable deals can be made.
SOME HANDLES look like the sweater you just got back from your big
sister after she borrowed it. They’re stretched out and worn-looking
before you ever even put them on. You think you can smooth out the
wrinkles or stretch out the bulges, but the more you work at it, the
worse they look.
SOME HANDLES are a hand offered to shake, but
maybe we feel that shake as a warning: The coming kiss of the rim is
bound to be just as rough as the touch to that hand.
But some
other handles are the hand offered – palm up – that you take into yours
with the promise that you are going to be gently walked -- hand in hand –
to a very pleasant encounter with a waiting rim.
Some lugs are
bugs. Some of those bugs are parasites. Ticks. And like ticks, they
appear to have dropped onto the pot in a seemingly random manner with no
aesthetic consideration of balance or composition. From there they
parasitically and immediately suck the life from an otherwise healthy
pot.
But some lugs are symbiotic, and to those lugs the pots
take a liken. They share the pot’s surface and the whole of the pairing
is greater than the sum of either part. They enhance the glaze in ways
the surface couldn’t have done without them in place.
SOME
HANDLES were following too closely when the pot in front of them jammed
on the brakes. Sometimes the ensuing wreck is catastrophic. Other
times such a fender bender can create interesting results. Without that
accident we may never have known that the bumper could even fit there.
SOME HANDLES are like your favorite rich butterscotch topping….on your favorite fettucine.
Alfredo?
Alfraidnot.
Switching metaphors mid-stride here, I have a friend who once told on
her husband, “He came downstairs wearing a plaid shirt over plaid pants.
I asked him ‘Howard, why in the world are you wearing that shirt and
those pants together?’ He answered that they were both his favorites.”
Well, duh.
But I see it with handles all the time. Fettuccini
w/Butterscotch. We like ‘em both. Not so much together. Beautiful
pot. Beautiful handle. Terrible match.
SOME HANDLES are like….
….Remember that junior high Health Ed book wherein they had a picture
of two stick figure men standing side by side – a big man with a little
fig leaf and a little man with a big fig leaf? So the publishers of the
Health Ed book tried to make it clear (bless their hearts), much to the
relief of a few 7th grade boys, that size doesn’t matter.
But it does with handles. And proportion means even more.
SOME HANDLES are invited by their pot to a seat at the table. In the
case of these handles, the pots exhibit a concave to which a handle
might offer a convex echo. Those pots have an empty visual space
inviting a handle to fill it. And for their part, the handles observe
the formality of the setting with its full complement of silverware
paraded in its proper place, the linen napkin, the china plate – and
those handles shape themselves into the proper dressy attire before
sitting down to dinner….
….Or maybe the handle observes a casual
setting and therefore adopts a more easy-going style. Either way, the
handle wasn’t an afterthought. The pot was made with the handle ever in
mind. The invitation was sent, the handle arrived in time and in
place.
Some handles have nice pots attached to them.
Framing
1. Framing (construction), common carpentry work
2. Framing (law), providing false evidence or testimony to prove someone guilty of a crime
3. Framing (social sciences) a set of concepts and theoretical
perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies, organize,
perceive, and communicate about reality.
4. Framing (visual arts), a technique used to bring the focus to the subject
5. Framing (World Wide Web), a technique using multiple panes within a web page.
I woke up early this morning. At 3:40 AM (that's "3:40
ayem-in-the-morning" if you're a Hoosier) I awoke with a start. The
chilling fear that I might have left 20 porcelain mugs open to the
heated air of the shop last night popped me out of bed faster than the
sound of a hairball retching cat.
That's fast. Abrupt, even.
So, after making coffee I've been out in the shop (turns out I did
remember to cover the mugs after all) and I've been watching a series of
very inspirational potter's videos -- all stirred up on a perpetual
youtube playlist by initially following Cary Hulin's link to a Svend Bayer video.
Because I was watching the videos one right after the other I began to notice the framing:
Contemporary MTV-style cropped imagery that made even a plastic tub of water seem somehow as pastoral as a Millet painting.
Eerie, emotion-stirring instrumental musical accompaniment to the video imagery.
Disembodied narrative, well-rehearsed. Phrases from the canon of
sayings that potters have rehearsed, repeated, and handed down from
potter to potter in our family since the time I first ever touched
spinning clay.
... Phrases so well-used that -- like the old
joke about the comedian's convention -- we could simply attach numbers
to in order to save time in the re-telling.
But I wouldn't want
to save that time. I want to hear the stories. The phrases. I like
to hear them told over and over and over. They are like hymns.
"Today we will be reading from Leach. Turn if you will to page 77. 'It seems reasonable to expect that beauty......"
I know the hymns. I know the stories. I still love to hear them anyway. They inspire me.
And a few contemporary creative souls are adding to that hymnbook: Dick Lehman, Tony Clennell, Tom Coleman,
to name a few. Souls generous enough to take the time to explain what
they're thinking as they're doing it so that I might approach what I am
doing in a more inspired way.
Well, in typical fashion, I couldn't wait to interrupt myself with that rabbit trail. But back to the subject:
Framing.
The videos reminded me that the framing isn't the work. (see definitions 3 and 4 above)
I remember the first time I took a pot out of the frame of its
presentation and brought it home -- only to discover that I had been
seduced by the frame and not the pot.
For the longest time I
wondered -- beyond timing and marketing concerns -- why I didn't like to
enter my pots into exhibitions with other potters. It's because in
doing so I lost control of the framing. I don't like to lose that
control.
Upon that self-discovery, I began to realize that it
belied a lack of confidence in the work alone. If forfeiting the power
of framing bothered me so much, it was a tacit admission that I thought
the work inherently weak.
I don't know where that introspection
has left me, but I'm forever conscious of trying (even if mostly
failing) to make pots strong enough that they need neither the
additional support of framing, nor the excuse of explanation.
Maybe.
