Making art in uncertain times
new year, new art
A bit about LA: there are many GoFundMes, and some of them are here and here. Here is another link to additional resources for those impacted. My brother-in-law evacuated but is back in his apartment, for now. It is a scary time, and masking is imperative to avoid inhaling the asbestos and lead that is inevitably in the air right now. Praying for rain, but not too much, because mudslides.
I turned in my book to my agent.
It still needs a ton of work. I don’t know how it ends. To be fair, I didn’t know how Cost of Living ended either, until suddenly it did. The book is still happening, so it’s hard to say. I don’t want go into the details quite yet. It feels good to get something in, but I also know there is so much work ahead. For now, I am focused on job applications, working on a new craft talk, and making pots, and will meet with my new editor soon. I also tried a little glow-up, as the kids say. The world is burning, but we still need to feel good about ourselves.
I got my hair cut by the same guy who has cut my hair for decades, since I was a child. He was the former creative director at Vidal Sassoon and, as Ori points out, I have gotten haircuts from him prior to all sorts of important life changes. Almost ten years ago, I flew home for a long weekend to see my parents and get my hair cut (I know, this feels insane, but keep in mind this was 2015, and the flight from Pittsburgh to Chicago was less than $100 round trip, in the dead of winter) and my mom and I looked at this house and called Ori and he and I put in an offer to buy it. Now, I think we might be ready to sell our house. It has served us well in a variety of ways, enabled us to have a safe place to be as we figured out the next stage of our lives, and the role that art would play in it. We have loved living here, but we need a change, with more art, and more creative community, and will see where the universe takes us. I am really excited.
To that end, I am thinking about what goals I have between now and then. Some are exceptionally practical, like fixing the last few things that need to be fixed, finishing projects, so whoever comes to look at the house feels happy and secure in viewing and purchasing. I want to show the house to best advantage. Ori is less concerned about it. Either someone will want our house or they will not, and the price is determined by the market and what people are willing to pay. But I was formerly a licensed real estate broker, and got a general contractor’s license in my town nine years ago (a three hour exam, but very doable), so I can see everything. There are lots of small things like this, easily fixed or remedied, missing a screw or a cover or paint or a wire or whatever else; I just need to put in the time.
On a similar tack, I want to use up the clay I have on hand, so we don’t have to move it. This means there will be lots of affordable pots, mostly mugs, coming soon. I am finally standardizing some processes here, particularly with the translucent, thixotropic clay, of which I still have maybe 400 pounds. I also have some clay from a company that no longer exists. The guy who owned the company and the clay recipes is named Tim. Tim has not, to my knowledge, sold any of his recipes to anyone who has made them. I know some people are frustrated: he had great recipes, just not the best business sense. He is someone who didn’t raise prices enough as material costs skyrocketed, and also perhaps moved the company to a less affordable location, and so he went out of business. I understand how hard that must be, but at the same time, I wish he would sell his recipes to people actually interested in making the clay for sale. I have some clay, some glaze from before he shut down. I’ve been lugging around this clay for years, not sure what to do with it. For a long time, I didn’t want to use it: it felt special, important, like something I wanted to keep forever. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. But I think it’s time. Maybe I’ll save a box in case I want to spend some time reverse-engineering the recipes for clay and glaze, though the glaze is much easier for me to figure out. This sort of thing is something I can do, if I want, given enough time and detailed notes and many hours of firing and refiring. Detailed notes are everything.
Initially, I used the discontinued clay body to make tons of tiny dishes, little pinch pots that I glazed white inside, with specks of iron bleeding through, tiny brown gunmetal flecks in the clay body. I did this after we found out our IVF process didn’t work, a few years ago, and we would not be having a kid. They’re my grief cups, I think. I make my feelings—anxiety mugs, obsession cups, joy cups. The grief cups are little slips of clay big enough to hold a couple rings or maybe a necklace chain at your bedside table. For a while I was shipping some of these out, if you asked for grief in your checkout. I didn’t charge anyone—seemed weird to charge for grief. It’s already a bit of a burden as it is, receiving grief in the mail. I’m hoping to make not-grief things with the clay, now. It’s a plastic, white stoneware that reaches vitrification—that means the temperature at which the clay is less porous, and approaches a glassy, foodsafe density—at 2200F. So there are fluxes in there, to bring down the melting point from a hotter temperature. I’m guessing there’s a lot of tile #6 in it, because that is what makes it so white and plastic, easy to work. Maybe, with time and a new studio, I will be able to reverse-engineer this clay body, but for now, I’m going to use it.
I can’t think about the election right now. I guess we’re just waiting, like everyone else.
Congratulations on turning in your book. Getting a haircut that makes you feel good is a nice way to commemorate the milestone. It’s a sad but moving story about how you made the grief cups. I imagine each little one is a piece of the hope you had to give up after discovering you couldn’t have kids, and now everyone who has one owns a little piece of that hope.