Is Beauty Enough?

Day; 26. Windy, cold, trying to snow. Temperature on  outside kiln; 38

Everyday at 4pm  I listen to Democracy Now on NPR with host Amy Goodman. It's just a habit with me, like checking in with Instagram at lunch, I'm just trying to connect with the outside world within the confines of my own studio and it's accompanying isolation.  I feel a need to know what's  happening  on Planet Earth on any given day   beyond that which has occurred here at Magpie Pottery. Today Amy interviewed actor Robert Redford at the Sundance Film Festival which he started 31 years ago. Such an interesting guy; studied art in Paris,  famous Oscar-winning director, political activist,  environmental documentary film maker...gorgeous hunk, but that's beside the point I know.

Anyway, it really cast me back 20 years to grad school when I  and fellow students would often argue about the role of the artist in our culture. Many of the sculptors and painters upstairs vehemently felt that art should be in the public interest and that the old modernist idea of the lone painter toiling away in his garret studio was passe. The potters in the basement however felt differently, and I was somewhere in- between. Having finished an undergrad degree in environmental studies a few years earlier, I sympathized with the political and social consciousness  of the conceptual artists I  had critiques with every month. But the potters downstairs were my real tribe and I understood their urge to simply make  beautiful objects out of clay despite the happening s in the wider world outside the studio.

And although I had put this issue to bed for myself by the time I received my MFA, it still haunts me sometimes. Like today, listening to Bob talk about republicans, climate change, and  the Colorado River and it's inability to reach the Sea of Cortez anymore.   I mean the world is  going to hell in a hand-basket and I 'm making cereal bowls. WTF?!  The old environmentalist in me feels chagrined.  Am I acting irresponsibly?  Is producing hand-made tableware enough anymore?

By the end of the broadcast  I ended up where I always do; with a resounding Yes!  Yes there is a place for beautiful handmade objects in this beleaguered world. And it's enough for me to focus my  life's work on adding to the beauty in it.

If It's Wednesday It Must Be Band Practice

Day; 25,  Sunny, incredibly beautiful, almost like spring in January. Temperature on outside kiln; 46

I'm feeling giddy and boastful, it is so beautiful in Santa Fe right now. Spring-like weather in the City Different with the east coast buried under 3 feet of snow.  Ahhhhh New Mexico! Yes we are at 7000 feet, but nicely southern when it comes to latitude. I lived on top of the Continental Divide for 10 years in Colorado, I know what a hard winter can be, and this is not it!!

Anyway, back in the studio this afternoon mixing up all my reclaim/recycled  clay again because I am too lazy to drive into town to buy it fresh.  Reclaim is a better product anyway; clay is like wine, the longer it  hangs  around the studio, the more plastic and easier to work with it becomes.  A little mold may be unslightly but it is very pliable and soft  now.  Potters would call it "long" as opposed to "short",  of which porcelain is famous for. I am singing and plunging as I go, mixing up a few hundred pounds for the next 3 days or so. After 2 hours of Girls Garage Band practice, I can't stop now, those darn melodies just get stuck in my head.    ..."We are all lost stars trying to light up the dark"...

It was good to start playing music again after a 3 week New Year's break for all of us. Although I don't know about anyone else,  I felt like I could hardly hold a pitch and rhythm. I haven't looked at our music for most of January. But I am a numbskull when it comes to music anyway so...

 But  what I  have come to realize lately however is that most folks just want to feel something and that if I sing with emotion, really connect with the song, than I can't go wrong. Except when I start out in the wrong key. But that's rare and I am learning to laugh at my mistakes. However  I think it's high time I go back to my mah-mhe-me-mo-moo's though.  After a few weeks of vocal exercises I can really tell a difference in my tone and ease of singing, but I just get lazy, it's a bit boring. Like playing scales on the piano to warm up the fingers...

Maybe next week.