Pottery in Process

About four years ago, I decided to try my hand at pottery. I found it a great way to take a little vacation from the trials and tribulations of everyday life, because it is a craft that you have to really pay attention to. You have to be respectful of the clay. You have to move slowly and purposefully. You have to be patient, waiting for the pottery to dry to leather-hard, waiting for the pottery to be bisqued, deciding the glaze colors and how to apply the glaze and so on

I'm a creative sort, and usually catch onto new crafts quickly. But I made ALOT of mistakes from my pottery. Mistakes on the wheel. Mistakes in how I covered the pots to dry. Mistakes in carrying the pots to the shelf. Mistakes in how I glazed. But every mistake made me see what I could do with the mistake. I went in another direction with my art.

So today, I worked on two pieces that started out as something else. The teapot began as a large flat pad that I threw when I was trimming some plates. It was more bulbous than I wanted, but I saved it anyway. The fleshy spout was also a mistake -- a little shorter and wider than I was thinking. There were three weeks between classes, so it dried out more than I thought it would. But I carved the floral lid. I decided to underglaze it in red, and as I painted, I came up with the polka-dotted body. I had no idea that it was going to look like this when I started this!

The same is true of the sunflower plate. When I was throwing this, I rushed through it, and it got a little lopsided. I made a very thick bottom, so when I was trimming, I had a very large foot. After I finished trimming, I took out the knife and started cutting out the petals- though at that time I was thinking about crowns. (The bottom has the same crown looking carving). When I finished the spotted teapot, I was inspired to make the crown plate into a sunflower plate. Now where did that come from?