…beneath The stillness of everything gone, and being still, Being and sitting still, something resides - W.S. I always say that If you unload the kiln and encounter one very good piece, you've had a very good firing. There may be a hundred pieces in the kiln that come off the warm shelves and onto ware boards and back inside – still. You never count the others, you look for the one. What I really want out of a kiln unload though is a reason to go on — the kiln is a completion, an ending of the work cycle. Will I start again? First there will be a pause, the kiln is cold, the studio is clean ..read more

Colorado River July 8 2020 I’ve always considered myself a introvert, ever since I first heard that word, I was ten or eleven years old. I like time on my own, I can be proudly diffident about parties, gatherings, invitations to anything with more than one or two people. Holiday dinners, planning meetings, mid-afternoon coffee with your out-of-town friends…maybe I’ll be there, but maybe not! Suddenly though, with the new restrictions, whereas this should be a perfect time for introverts, free points for just doing what you always do - suddenly things are different. I’ve heard this from other ..read more

Classes are suspended, the studio is empty (almost), the trough up at the top of the gravel parking lot where we dump some of our throwing water on busy days, usually a brimming pond, is now a hollow with smooth mudcracks peeling up as the weather warms. Bisqueware, once collected up and dipped in glaze as quick as we could get it from the electric kiln, now sits waiting on shelves, like a crowd of travelers stuck someplace, halfway through their journey. With most of our potter’s wheels rented out to students who have set them up on their patios & under portals in back yards, we are tak ..read more

This afternoon I took a walk up the arroyo behind my place, sunny and muddy, mid-January, granulated snow turning to water in the hoofprints and bootracks and ATV treads, I was mourning the passing of Terry Jones and thinking about the up-coming Chinese New Year, the year of the rat and the outbreak of the Coronavirus. Lots to think about and my conclusion, as I skidded back down the hill toward the back door: 2020 hasn’t quite begun yet. We are all still waiting, this bumpy January will soon give way to the start of the real new year. Still. Winter is here, and along with these other dubious ..read more

thrown & altered bowl, November 2019. click to view in shop One of the numerous reasons to live with art, not that you need a reason, is that you never know, when encountering an example of it, a book, a movie, a ceramic bowl, a new song, how much of what you notice is really in you and how much is in the work itself, if any. This bowl came out of the kiln earlier in December and looking at it in the pile of work unloaded onto the plywood table in the studio, I thought I saw a lot in it — a beginning and an end, an airy lightness, a ..read more

There’s still some water in the Rio, I read in an email the other day. Want to try to get out there after work? Sure, I said. It would be pretty late though when I can get away… The Rio Grande is largely fed by snowmelt, at least up here, relatively close to its headwaters. That means great water, and great rapids, early in the season when Colorado’s mountains are still melting - and then usually, this time of year, mid-August, we get just a trickle coming through the Taos Box canyon and down past Pilar, the go-to place for Santa Fe paddlers, especially after work. But this has been a big-wat ..read more

The other day, through a friend, I acquired a couple very old ceramic pieces. The acquisition may really take a long time, years probably, to fully accomplish - still, for now, the new platter and bowl are sitting on my kitchen table and are like new companions, new creatures in the house. In the evening in the kitchen I glance over, mid-spoonful, and there they are, watching.I am watching them too. They are not rare. The piece above, the platter, is Japanese umanome from the late Edo period. Probably produced in the Seto region, these platters, I am learning as I read online, were in prolific ..read more

This Oribe teabowl is from Kokeigama, a great ceramics studio in a big old pair of buildings at the top of a very steep hill in Tajimi, Japan. I arrived there on bicycle, thrilled to be there in the heart of the Mino ceramics region, eager to see as much as I could in a couple days.Tajimi was my last stop before taking the train back to Nagoya, and from there to Tokyo, at the conclusion of my short but fantastic first trip to Japan. I am very grateful to a number of people who helped make the trip happen - people I was friends with already, people I became friends with during the lengthy learn ..read more