Recently, I've grown more and more dissatisfied with my own work. I've mastered a few forms fairly well, and I have wanted to push myself to do more pieces and more styles. While my pieces are technically "fine," they always seem to lack a bit of oomph. For those who are unfamiliar, I tend to leave work pretty plain - stark or straight-lined. I may also not spend much time finishing a piece. I've always brushed my lack of attention to detail to one of two things: I don't spend time working on pieces because I'm into "the big picture" or I flat-out don't have time to spend time on minutia. I revel in pure functionality of a piece. Despite this echoes of former critiques from friends and instructors have been bouncing around in my head...
"Your work is great, but...."
"Have you thought about adding other details to your piece?"
"You could spend more time doing...."
All these echoes have been mixing with my desire to make functional pieces which speak to my life, and the things I love.
Today we were privileged enough to have Brenda Lichman provide a workshop to demonstrate altered thrown pieces. Her work is insanely fantastic. For every minute I don't spend paying attention to detail, she's spent countless amounts of time thinking out her style, and the effects she wants to make on her pieces.
This attention to detail was an important lesson, but was not the religious experience of the workshop for me. Instead Brenda sharing her journey to ceramics and explaining how she determined which forms she wanted to create spoke to me. The influence on her work has included many different elements. I'll not deign to speak for her. One of the elements she mentioned was her family. During this story, it struck me why my work has been a bit, er, stilted.
It amazed me to realize I've been stuck reflecting my WASPy (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) reserved farming background in my pieces. It wasn't that I didn't want to spend time to paying attention to detail or adding elements to pieces - it was more that it just "wasn't done." I focused on the utilitarian value of the piece, and then moved on. Design elements weren't to be considered, they might not look "appropriate" or somehow cause alarm.
As you might realize, I've evolved a bit from that previous WASP background. My life is a bit more colorful and way less appropriate these days. Occasionally Jay will hear me say "we don't do that," but it's certainly not as often as one might think. ;) This juxtaposition with my life and work has been the source of dissatisfaction with my work. While there's no easy fix for finding my style, it does harbinger the possibility that my work and life will be able to reconcile.
