Learning to Expect the Unexpected

I’ve been looking at and exploring an small handful pieces remaining from my first year of independent studio work. It’s was the summer of 2009, and looking back, its easy to forget what a huge leap it was to believe in the direction I was headed.

Aside from the devotion to a developing seance of form and craftsmanship,
the work being pulled from my kilns was so vastly different from anything anyone else was pulling out of their kiln, surfaces were so unpredictably dynamic and alive, I honestly didn’t know what to think.
At times a surface might be warty and smooth. Maybe, they would come out of the kiln covered in planes of aggressive scales or a sweet subtlety in the surface tectonics would trace the underlying design. Maybe what I thought was going to be lightly textured would come out rough and blistered.
Or maybe the glaze would peel off in small sheets leaving a rifts in a beautiful surface.

It was an at time frustrating lesson in managing expectations in favor the joy of play and discovery.

It was learning to embrace what could be seen as flaws could much more importantly be found to be an aspect that adds character to the work and lifts it up as an object to be appreciated and contemplated.
A very special something…

And as it stood,
a few years later I found out, it is our own flaws,
when set against our character, that make us all who we are.
If we allow ourselves,
we can be very special Somethings.