When I get work back from a firing, I need time to get to know it, to learn it... so often it's not the physical pieces that I need, so much as an understanding of them.
I like to live with artwork; mine and others'. Incorporating it into my life helps me to be attentive to little things, to learn and appreciate details. They teach. I enjoy vessels; some need to be filled and used, others stand well alone. Finding the passenger that is right for the vessel is an enjoyable exercise. Sometimes it's immediately evident, other pieces stand, empty, for a long time before their proper use is realized. In some ways this is a spiritual exercise: not that a piece couldn't be used for anything, but that sometimes there's a rightness in a particular use.
What makes me need to take a piece home - here I think more of others' work - is often not that it is lovely so much as that I am intrigued by it - perhaps intrigued by looking at it, perhaps intrigued by holding it, by the thought of using it, by something else, that is best described as a reaction... in all these, there's something that fascinates me, whether how I experience the piece or how I experience myself experiencing the piece.
Though sometimes it's something far simpler than that; it's the anticipation of enjoying using something, or it's an object that is simply so lovely to behold that I want to keep enjoying it. Those ones, those are just happiness. Bliss. Others, though not lovely in the same way, have something about them, a sturdy plate-ness, for example, or some other singularity of being, after a more ordinary fashion, that easily joins everyday life.
I've been looking at things long enough that I tend to know that reaction, the one that says, you won't be sorry. It's known in an instant. The logic may trail, sometimes by months.
Whatever that initial reaction is, tends to stay. It clarifies over time, I come to understand it better - even a less-favorable reaction, wanting to like something but having reservations, for example - but it doesn't really change.
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6 comments:
The sorrow of not achieving or achieving.
The more you get the more you need it.
Understand it. Don't avoid it. Or run away from it.
Looking, looking, looking ...
This is fascinating, thanks for letting us in. As someone who doesn't usually see things that way - or understand how to "live with" art in that manner - it's very interesting to hear your perspective.
I love how you write... and how you convey what's inside. I sense a little of what you're saying here. Most pieces I see, I couldn't imagine using. But I guess it is in discovering how to use a particular vessel where the art comes alive.
I have a favorite coffee cup- a fine piece of pottery given to me with a fascinating story behind it. Drinking from it gives me an entirely different experience. Coffee tastes so much better coming from it. There is a perfect "rightness" in its use.
Thanks for sharing your experience with us and for letting us inside for a glimpse of the artist!
Victor - give away what you need?
V - ?
Trev, glad you enjoyed. Who knew it would be so different?
Tommy, I often can't either... it's so essential to pick things up, feel how it interacts, sits in my hand. It's funny, now that I have a variety of pieces, a variety of forms, that there's no longer a default when the cupboard's open, there's actually a compositional decision to be made that goes beyond being sure the vessel is big enough. This winter I've been buying handmade mugs for the first time. On particularly cold days, I have wanted to use only the most substantial of mugs for a warm drink... something that likes to be held in both hands, to keep them warm (in particular if I'm having a spiked hot chocolate and going outside to drink it), something comforting. Then again, it's been a particularly shitty winter, not only weather-wise, so the comfort's probably against more than the cold. In any event, a delicate teabowl for tea in the winter just won't do. A beefy one, maybe. Or a mug. It's all very odd.
Plating food is a whole other story... but a similar one.
I bought a mug last winter at the Craftswomen show that has grown into a real friend. It started with infatuation over the color, but mellowed into the comfort of holding it, warm, nestled in my hand.
No manufactured stuff can match that personal connection.
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