Wearing Glass Shoes

Yesterday, while partaking of my pre-studio morning ritual of tea and my perusal of the New York Times, out of the corner of my eyes I could see the op ed columns. "Don’t go there today Janet," I told myself, fearing that there might be something there that would pop out and bite me. Call it my post traumatic Maureen Dowd stress syndrome. (The lady actually gave me nightmares) But my curiosity getting the better of me, I elected to read the op ed piece "No, It’s Not about Race" by David Brooks.
It was an interesting, insightful piece and I mention it here as worth a gander for anyone who would like an antidote to the op ed pieces "Boy, oh Boy" and "Rapping Joe’s Knuckles." Although I believe that the Peaceable Kingdom tenor may be overly sanguine, it was a refreshing perspective on the current conflicts in the country being played out in Capital Hill as seen through the prism of American history. In his op-ed piece, David Brooks introduces us to the dichotomy of Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian politics, with the Hamiltonian representing an educated urban elite (read Pro-Obama) and the Jeffersonian representing rural populist (read anti-Obama). While it is an oversimplification, it is an actual political analysis in the tradition of leaving the "self" out of the interest and remaining true to one’s own voice. (by contrast so many sentences in the Maureen Dowd op ed pieces were prefaced by "Clyburn says..." that one had to wonder whose op ed piece it actually was - hers or James Clyburns’?)
In his article, David Brooks characterizes the populist camp as being rude, ill-mannered and over the top. While I can concur with that I would have to say then, that the populist camp is not isolated to people with anti-Obama agendas but rather stratifies both sides of the political table. Indeed, during the campaign last year one of my Democrat friends sent me a pro-Obama article in the so-called progressive media that was literally laced with gutter profanity (I wrote an article about this earlier called "Pig Lips and Potty Mouths). I agree that we have a problem, but I’m not sure that it is a problem of an urban educated elite versus a populist rural one because each side has its share of highly educated, semi-educated and the uneducated. I’m afraid we would have to add to that a heavy dose of the uniformed as well because people are too concerned about the economic crisis and too pressed for time to sift out fact from fiction in the sea of information on the net and in other news venues.
With regard to Capitol Hill? I would submit that we voted for change we can believe in and got change that we can’t handle - with Republicans being the most monumental of frightened sore losers and Democrats wielding power unwisely for lack of practice.
In any case, with the screech level of opinion editorial writing in the New York Times turned down several volumes, they are back, in my estimation, from the brink of irresponsibility to plain old garden variety bias. Thank you.

Beauty Bound, Lost then Found

Once again, the annual international exhibition of mosaic art will take place at the Ciel Gallery in Charlotte, NC. The gallery is small but packs a good punch. It is always fun to be in this show. This year, I have three works in this exhibition which I will discuss in three posts.
The piece I have reproduced to the right is called "Blind Balance" and has a history as rocky as its constituent parts. "Blind Balance" was a part of a one woman exhibition I held at the Rabold Gallery back in 2005. The exhibition was well-received though not well-attended. There were two nicely done articles about the exhibition as well, one in Carolina Arts and the other in the newsletter Groutline, of the mosaic organization I founded some time ago, the Society of American Mosaic Artists. The exhibition, "Reflections on an Imagined Archaeology," displayed one of my most coherent bodies of work, and one which I am still working on today. Needless to say, the work received more in the way of accolades then cash - as not even one work from that exhibition sold. The gallery owner was even more demoralized by this than I was - perhaps because at least at the end of the exhibition I still had my work and the hope of a more successful future. I did not listen to his advice to refrain from making more of these mosaics of ceramic and stone but continued to explore this venue. I actually did acquire a few patrons for this art despite such inauspicious beginnings - but mostly I did them for myself.
After bundling up my commercial disaster but successful intellectual experiment in painting and mosaic, I divided up the work among my other galleries. The gallery to the North eventually gave the unsold pieces back to me after an unsuccessful attempt to find clients for them there. When I got the work back I noticed that one of my favorite pieces, "Blind Balance" was missing. I checked with my other galleries and no one had it. Apparently this caused the owner of the North gallery great distress and she made a desperate search for "Blind Balance," turning her loft gallery upside down for many hours in the process. Although a simple consultation of the consignment sheet would have sufficed for me, this was assurance that the work was indeed gone. Since the piece was not listed on the consignment sheet at that gallery or anywhere else there was nothing that could be done to locate it. I just relinquished myself to the fate of yet another art loss - consigning it to the pile of stolen works and both natural and manmade destroyers of art. I don’t think that in this regard I am necessarily less fortunate than most artists. I take this as the consequence of being prolific - the more art produced the more opportunities to lose some of it. I was therefore resigned to never seeing "Blind Balance" again.
Three years later, however, "Blind Balance" suddenly resurfaced after my gallery in Columbia, SC closed down for good. Since the gallery in the North had delivered my holdings to this gallery, I can only conclude that probably it was with the returned goods and somehow did not get on the inventory list. From Columbia it was taken to Beaufort where it stayed quietly until the Columbia branch of the gallery closed and the Beaufort gallery downsized to accommodate those holdings. Whatever the cause of the mixup, it was good to have the mosaic back again.
"Blind Balance" is a curious mosaic, with a central blindfolded woman balancing on a plate on either side of which are two squares of clay stamped with an impression of a stone seal carved in archaic Chinese script. They read, consecutively, "candor" and "good health." These can be read as candor leading to good health or being diametrically opposed to it. In the context of our current health care crisis, "good health" and being true to oneself and others can be mutually exclusive. This is expressly so when following one’s calling may entail a risk of not being covered by health insurance. Many artists and other self employed people are in this plight, having to weigh following one’s heart against protecting one’s body.
From time to time, I digress from an art blog and veer into politics. My discussion of "Blind Balance" and its implications may be another opportunity to comment on our present health care debacle. It has been disturbing to read about the shouting matches and breakdown of all rational discourse at the recent "Town Hall" meetings across the country regarding plans for universal health care insurance. Universal health care coverage is so desperately needed it is appalling that partisan politics once again came into play. Perhaps the blindfold in my mosaic "Blind Balance" can serve to illustrate the way Americans debate serious issues, refusing to look at facts, each other, themselves, the world.
　

Wings Too Short to Fly With

As an artist it is often necessary to change focus abruptly and expeditiously in order to survive as a creative person. This means switching seamlessly from art teacher to studio artist to entrepreneur. Donning various hats on short order is not always easy - especially when settled into one frame of working mind for an extended period of time. Needless to say, my summer teaching jobs left me inspired but rusty in my own studio. I have often heard it said that teaching art can be so consuming of one’s energy that it can become all but impossible to pursue one’s own creative work. After a long but necessary hiatus from the studio to travel and teach I could sense my lack of concentrated presence as I sat down to get back to my own studio to work.
Indeed, I picked up my clay with my brain commanding me to "create!" "sculpt!" "now!" But all I could do was hold the clay and stare vacantly at the wall.
But then a curious thing happened. Despite being tired a small clay figure arose from my hands - senseless at first and uninspired - but slowly his form took shape. He was a man, sitting up from a long sleep perhaps, with his hands pressed over his ears to block out some cacophonous sound.
I added small wings to his back and made up a preposterous explanation about the sculpture for my inquiring husband.
"You see, it is about an angel distraught at having only very tiny ineffectual wings. He closes his ears with his hands to drown out the other angel’s songs because he cannot fly up to heaven to be with them," I said. Words like that come from a tired person’s mouth. There was a hint of self-deprecating mockery.
The winged man was originally intended to be a fixture in one of my relief mosaics. But there was a problem with his becoming too much a figure in the round and now a free-standing sculpture. Now that he could not be included in a relief mosaic I had to do something else with him. So I created a round pedestal and affixed him to it. The pedestal looked like a lid. But a lid needs a jar so I ended up making that as well - an enormous coiled vessel. I had never made a coiled vessel so large and was surprised that I could do it. It will barely fit in my kiln and I am hoping that it won’t explode when I finally fire it and put this piece together.
My man of the stump wings soon had compatriots - more reclining men that will soon find there way into my "Archaeology" series of mosaics. With these three, this series takes a different turn
The figures are not resting quietly like the previous ones in this series but are in some distress - blocking out sounds with their hands, holding their poor beleaguered heads. Even though they will go their separate ways in finished pieces, I noticed that they look well as an ensemble. So from wings too short to fly with, new directions in art evolve.

Teaching That Last Little Bit of Magic in Mosaic

In the course of creating art, there are sometimes phenomenon that are as persistent as they are difficult to explain. This is particularly true when I make my mosaics. Mosaic making is a slow process of assembling items piece by piece. I incorporate a lot of found objects in my mosaics which often slows the process down even more since it might take a while before I find just the right thing to finish a piece. There is some magic to this. When I start nearing the end of a work, with just a few more pieces to go, that last element which ties the work together and fits exactly into a preformed niche, often presents itself to me in a serendipitous fashion. I might find it in an antique store, someone’s attic, or even on the street. It is almost as if the yearning of the incomplete space conjures up just the right thing to fill it.
When teaching, I usually like to be able to explain every thing that goes into an art work. But lately I’ve added an element of mystery to the heuristic process - a blank space in which something wonderful can happen. In my most recent mosaic course, I incorporated the mystery of the desired fill-in-the-black piece when I explained to my students that just at the critical juncture in creating a work of mosaic art, the right piece will appear. To their wonderment, this actually happened. A student working on a rather ordinary mosaic consisting of rather mundane strata of green tesserae was presented with an old porcelain doll’s head by an instructor teaching a class in an adjacent room. While passing through my class, he noticed that her art work needed something and thought that this old doll’s head he had lying around would be just the thing. It was. The head with the green flowers in the hair became an effective focal point for the mosaic. Another student found an effective narrative for her work in a found tile that had a primitive depiction of a man with a club and a reclining woman. She fragmented the tile and created rivers of glass between them. Another student had a green stone in her bag of goods that helped move the green colors around the primitive tile mosaic.
Perhaps there is no real mystery to the phenomenon of the last little bit of magic that goes into a mosaic. It could be that the suggestion of Devine mosaic intervention itself makes students more receptive to exciting possibilities in their art. Or perhaps, staring at the empty pockets of space causes the shape of those spaces to be carried in one’s mind during the journeys outside the studio during the course of the day and therefore easy to see objects that fit the mental template. But explanations can take the fun out of creating, so I just enjoy the seemingly spontaneous discoveries in making art and hope that my students do as well.
The featured mosaic is by my student Karen Murchie.

The Secret Abstract Expressionist

The Abstract Expressionist Within
As creative human beings we have two inheritances: our genetic nature and our learned traditions. My featured painting today is a combination of a pedigree of pedagogy and ties to family. The detail above is a section from a large commissioned portrait of my mother as a young woman. The painting is sentimental for its peachy coloring and somewhat whimsical mood of the sitter. It reflects my mother’s tastes and attitudes which suit the predilections of the owner of the painting, my brother.
But there is something beneath the surface - hidden in the corners and backgrounds. It can only be seen if one looks past the subject. The section in the lower right corner of the painting is a window to a different world - a world that is not the rural New Jersey of the subject, but a New York sensibility that began more or less in the late thirties. In order for viewers to see it, I’ve extracted this window and reproduced it separately at the top of the page.
This is the world of my painting ancestors. I am what you would call a third generation abstract expressionist. The color and composition theories that I learned from my educational forebears comes in a direct line from my teacher’s teacher, Hans Hofmann. Hans Hofmann could be considered the father of Abstract Expressionism, and, in a sense, my pedagogical grandfather. His painting schools in both Munich and New York, as well as his writing, influenced a myriad of artists. In preparation for a lecture and painting class I will be teaching at the Columbia Museum of Art on August 29, I have been studying the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1930's, 40's, 50's and 60's. This has meant reviewing the writings of Hans Hofmann, Clement Greenberg, as well as some more recent scholarship. As I reviewed the paintings and read the art once more, it suddenly struck me just how good my fortune was to have studied with these modern masters in New York. It added meaning and reality to words. . It made art history part of personal history. Paul Resika’s visage on the internet, for instance, as one of Hans Hofmann’s more successful protege’s, was not just text and information. I could hear the booming voice, see the eagle eyes, and recall a commanding presence in the New York studio. Abstract Expressionism and its legacy was a powerful developmental force like that upon the development of visual art in the United States. Even if you didn’t agree with the way they evaluated art or all of their precepts and theories, the Abstract Expressionists and their spiritual progeny set some valuable standards for looking at paintings.

Their paintings resisted a narrative interpretation but the artists opened up the canvas to sacred journeys. It is from them that I attempted, and still exhort my own students, to fill every inch of the painted surface with nuance and interest. The freedom from directly copying a model, allowed for greater experimentation with paint as an means to express mood, insight, and perceptions through gestures in paint. It was a dance with the media that was often nature based and more often than not expressed an inner nature as well.
According to Hofmann, a painting should never be flat. The "push and pull" of color against color and shape against shape should create an atmospheric depth on the canvas, allowing the viewer to imagine floating or flying through it to another world. This world could look like mountains, forests, the depths of water. Or it could look like the crystal structure of rocks, the interior of a cave, or perhaps the paint on a weathered door. The painted surface provokes imagination. It is the joy of looking at these richly painted surfaces that still makes me impatient with paintings that look like a mustard stain on someone’s shirt.

In the painting of my mother, there are two hearbeats; the sentimental beat of literal maternal ties and the beat of grandfather Hofmann. Although Hofmann resisted a narrative reading of paintings, there is a way to read this particular painting - an easy reading because it is figurative. The hand of the figure points down to the ground. But what should be ground is atmosphere. It is about the past and about the future that one escapes to -amorphous but real nontheless. The challenge this month is to see if I can make a future for fourth generation Hofmann students.

Time for Silence, Space for Inaction

In Chinese calligraphy, there are moments where motion stops. The brush comes to a halt at the end of a stroke. During this pause there is a collection of energy and reorientation before movement begins again. The non-movement is called the dun, and is often preceded by a firm exhalation and planting down of the heel of the brush - almost like the heel of a dancer at the end of one leap and preparing for another. This moment of pause is not without its drama, for it concludes one movement and anticipates the next.
I often think of the dun when I have a protracted flurry of activity in one sphere and have to switch for another - like now when my period of gypsy teaching and attendance at arts festivals ends and I begin to prepare for autumn conferences, solitary studio work, updating records and doing more research for new course offerings. The former is exuberant and the latter quiet and reflective. Plunging from one life into another without a pause, I find to be too disorienting. So the dun as a state of mind as well as physical inaction is important to me. Sometimes a pause is filled with mindless but necessary action - like cleaning up and reorganizing the studio space for the next round of activity. Or I take a useless ride to nowhere.
I often think of the dun when I witness first hand as well as read about the epidemic of texting and twittering in this country. I see the lack of the pauses necessary for reorganizing a life when I read the ceaseless chatter on Facebook. Some of this is fun, of course, but at the risk of sounding like a party poop extra ordinaire, I find that if I don’t ignore most of the invites, I start to feel like a chattering monkey. So I log on and sweep out - probably mortifying cyberfriends with my misanthropic presence and virtual gift refusals. It is tough love, I try to tell myself. They should be finishing that last chapter of a novel, writing a song or a poem, or just luxuriating in a moment of precious silence.
What, I wonder, is so fearful about silence and inaction, that we must fill every hole in the day with activity? Will something or someone we don’t want come in and fill the space or time before we plug it up ourselves?
I taught Chinese calligraphy again for maybe the thousandth time this past summer. And I noticed that my American students had the same problem they always have with it - they don’t know when to stop moving. The movements were difficult but the dun was harder. Eventually they got the hang of it but had to be reminded to alter their speed from fast to slow, to twisting, then STOPPING and PAUSING, then repeating.
So for anyone reading this, I invite you to join me in reflecting upon the seated faceless form I painted and DO NOTHING for five minutes. Then reflect upon what is really important. And share with real friends in real time with real gifts if that is possible. If it is not, then share a heartfelt thought that took some time and intent.

The Little Black Pot

The Little Black Pot
Little black pot
embraced by a bear
smoothed into being
by hands warmed in the sweat of the sun
Generation to generation
folded their earthen coils
onto hollow clay
shaping them into vessels
that held the breath of their ancestors
Shaman’s airs created languorous notes
that could not leave the hollows of their heads
Makers of bowls
pressed into existence by hands
widened by what they held
Creators of twin jars
that howled with the waters
flowing through the conduits
that inextricably bound them
Parched lips touched red earth
polished by the round stones
that once tumbled in the bellies of dinosaurs
on their antediluvian journeys
The sojourn of the soul
scratched out a white line
a time line that meandered
across the black and brown clouds
hovering over burned earth
circumnavigating
around and around
the world of a polished vessel
Generation to generation
hands rubbed their essence into clay
oil of the flesh
eased its way into the little black pots
Turning, turning
Hand held vessels
blackened by smoke and fire which consumed the air
beneath a nest of gnarled branches and the dung of animals
Hands caressed the surface that soothed the heart
and wiped away the pain of feeling less than yet being more than
a little black pot
　

The experience of learning a different art form can sometimes have welcome benefits to one’s own art. The course in Tewa pottery I completed at Common Ground on the Hill caused me to revise one of the poems in my book manuscript, Moments in Light and Shadows. I had painted a small canvas from a sketch I made of Kathy (Wan Povi) a year ago and later composed the poem to accompany the painting. The painting and poem are in the chapter of the book called Journeys, which contain images and texts relating to quests for knowledge and understanding. The search is either literal, in the form of people depicted on pathways, or spiritual, in a subject’s exploration of a personal past and aspirations for the future.
There is nothing quite like empirical knowledge as a source for enriching writing or any other art form. After being exposed to the physical process of making the black pottery that I depicted a year ago in the painting and poetry, I was able to revise in such a way as to insert some quirky gems about the process involved in the making of Tewa pottery - such as the use of stones from the digestive systems of dinosaurs for burnishing vessels. The very last line of the poem "... the pain of feeling less than, yet being more than a little black pot," is a somber way to end the verse this time around. It refers to a brief mention during my class about Kathy’s work with women who have been victims of domestic violence, some of who were also creators of blackware pottery. It occured to me in rewriting that the burnishing of these vessels was a way of rubbing out the pain of feeling like an empty vessel or being used as a receptacle for another’s fear and anger. "Yet being more than" offers, however, a ray of hope in the recognition that despite how it is used, there is an intrinsic value to a person’s life that can be grasped and realized by the self.
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　
　

A Tewa Pottery Pit Firing

As our course in the art of Tewa pottery drew to a close at the end of our week-long seminar at Common Ground on the Hill, I became increasingly excited about the pit firing. Would we actually dig a pit? And where would we do this on school property? To my amazement, our "pit" turned out to be a makeshift kiln constructed directly on top of the asphalt parking lot behind the studio. Kathy and Gilbert Sanchez began laying down metal strips directly on the asphalt, then placed what looked like an extra large metal cookie sheet on top of that. Tin can were placed upside down on top of that and the sheet was loaded up with cedar kindling. The empty spaces were filled up with cedar chips. A grate was put on top of that and then lined with more metal sheets. All the old metal and tin surprised me. I was expecting something much more earthy. The burnished pots were placed upside down on the metal sheets. Then a second tier was placed on top of that and the rest of the pottery was stacked one on top of the other on level two. The pots were quite small so a number of them fit into this box of metal stoked with cedar chips. There were some tall corner pieces of metal that held side pieces of metal to make a small rectangular kiln. I asked if they built larger kilns in New Mexico and I was surprised when they said that they did not. Kathy and Gilbert explained that because of the risk of loss only small amounts of pots were fired at a time.
When the pots were all in the makeshift kiln box we lined the sides with locally obtained buffalo chips. They came in handy small pizza-sized pieces that were good for stacking.
After a charming ritual consisting of tossing corn meal onto the kiln and wishing for good luck, the fire was lit. Between the wish for good luck and the burning of the fire, Kathy and Gilbert prepared us for accepting whatever the fire might bring our way. So much is beyond the artist’s control in this type of firing. A pot could explode. The flames lick their own design on a pot. We had an object lesson here is relinquishing desire to fate and to accept whatever the fire gives us.
The fire was very good to us - in large part of course because of the skills of teachers - who knew exactly when to smother the flames with the dung. Since this was a reduction firing, the dried dung took the oxygen out of the kiln atmosphere, turning the red pottery black. There were no breakages from the firing process and everyone had beautiful glossy vessels. I had to teach when the fire was cooled down and the pots removed but one of my fellow students kept coming into my classroom to report on the vessels as they were removed from the ash. Her excitement as she described each one was practically infectious. It was almost like a report on multiple births.
What was particularly interesting about the result of the firing is that some pots had flashpoints on them from areas where air got into the kiln and reoxidized the vessels. In these areas the pots became red again. I made a functioning clay whistle which came out from the ashes with a red spot at the tip where a design in slip radiated out. I could not have asked for a better gift from the fire.

The Art of Tewa Pottery

As an undergraduate at Douglass College in New Jersey, I took a ceramics classes with Ka Kwong Hui, a professor who led me to his teacher in China some years later. Although two dimensional art was to become my mainstay, I developed a genuine admiration for ceramic art and have to this day continued to surround myself with examples of this craft.
Most students of ceramic start with hand-built pottery and eventually "graduate" to the wheel. I followed that routine as well even though my heart was more in coils, slabs and pinch pots. There was one famous builder of hand-built coiled potter that I admired and wished to know more about. The black pots of Maria Martinez stood austerely out from the pages of ceramicists past in our student textbooks. I puzzled over how she got them so perfectly symmetrical without a wheel and how that glossy black metallic sheen on them came about. I imagined myself coiling these lovely shapes and burnishing them to a high polish. What would it be like, I wondered, to make pots with Maria Martinez? I wished that I could.
Little could I know that three decades later I would make pots with the grandchild and great grandchild of Maria Martinez. The opportunity came to me as one of the perks of being a member of the teaching faculty in the Common Ground on the Hill Program at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland. The course was indeed a dream come true. I was finally able to satisfy my curiosity about how those black shiny pots are made.
The course started out with a few rituals on human interconnectedness and reverence for the sky and earth. There was also a film shown about Maria Martinez and her family, some of which was told in the native Tewa Pueblo language. Kathy (Wanpov) and Gilbert Sanchez had us first make the clay by hand with 50% clay mined from New Mexico and 50% volcanic ash mixed slowly with water to a malleable consistency. The Sanchez’s were extraordinarily neat and clean about their work. We kneaded our little portions of red clay on pieces of used blue jeans that were cut into surprisingly uniform rectangles. The compulsive part of me was very happy about that. When we managed to form our clay into a uniform ball we slammed it gently and repeatedly onto the hard table surface to make certain it was compact. We were then told to pinch off about a quarter of the ball and form it into a small pinch pot in a clay form called a puki. The rest of the pot was built up in coils on top of that base.
The forming of this pot was full of unexpected surprises and discoveries. I had always thought of ceramic pots needing to be thin-walled even if hand built. But the Tewa tradition has a pot built up with rather thick walls due to the subsequent scraping and sanding down of the vessel. I found that I liked the smell of this earthy clay. The texture took some getting used to. It wasn’t as resilient as commercial earthenware clays and therefore was not adaptable to long stretching or pulling out of forms. We were told that the rigors of the burnishing and pit firing would cause thin extensions from forms to break off. So the limits of the medium to a large degree influenced the design - especially when it came to figures like the small animals the artists made which tended to be stream-lined and compact.
After the pot was finished there were several steps involved in revising and finishing the shape. The general shaping was done with either a commercial pottery tool or pieces of natural gourds. I used a natural gourd to shape the pot pictured on the right. After the clay set up to a stage I know as "leather hard" the post was scraped. The Sanchez’s used ordinary every day items for the scraping such as melon ball scoops for the interiors of pots and lids from metal tins for the outside. The Sanchez’s very meticulously gathered the scrapings from everyone’s pottery and preserved them in a plastic bag for future use. It made me feel that this was indeed clay worth its weight in gold..
We were encouraged to allow the clay to "speak to us" rather than try to dictate a shape to it. This was helpful because my first vessel, a pear shaped bottle with an oddly shaped stopper, evolved from my intention to make a bowl. After getting a better feel for the clay, however, I was able to reproduce the forms of my ideas. I did find myself wanting to make more and more things and noticed a little reluctance from our maestros to have us make too many items. Just one day later it became very clear as to why. The shaping and scraping went rather expeditiously but the next step was much more time-consuming. Each vessel had to be sanded down and then wet wiped smooth ( it was interesting to note that the clay dust from the sanding was discarded as potentially contaminated with grit from the sandpaper).
The next step in the Tewa pottery process was the addition of slip and the burnishing. The Sanchez’s had us apply the slip with a strip of cloth. I found this a little awkward and eventually had to use a brush on subsequent pieces. The pottery required three to four coats of red slip with an application of lard on top of the last coat. The lard was used to keep the slip moist enough to work but I accidentally found that one of the pots burnished to a high sheen without the addition of the lard - possibly because the more humid climate of the northeast kept the slip moist longer than arid New Mexico.
We burnished our pottery with smooth polished stones. The best stones to use were ones without pits. Flaws in the stones could scrape the delicate surface of the pottery. It was interesting to learn that some of the most coveted stones for burnishing for the Sanchez group of potters were gastroliths. These are stones that were swallowed by dinosaurs and slowly tumbled around in their guts to create a smooth polished surface. I recall seeing examples of these in the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia and thinking how much I would like to have one to burnish my pottery with. I still have my eyes on the white one in the glass case on the second floor of the museum.
Burnishing pottery is a labor intensive process. I was up until about 11 PM for two consecutive nights polishing my little creations. But two other ambitious classmates and I made a party of it - one of them bringing ice cream sandwiches, cookies, and a plethora of candies. There is nothing like a sugar high and polishing pots to bring out a feeling of camaraderie and joy - even giddiness. Gilbert and Kathy Sanchez were very generous with their time in coming out to the studio late at night to join us some evenings. Suffice it is to say that a good time was had by all.
The last step before firing the pots was the addition of slip decoration. Slip decoration was added on top of a burnished pot to create lines and shapes that would remain dull in contrast to the high sheen. This was how Maria Martinez made those gorgeous black on black designs. Another surprise here was that the slip was applied with brushes made from yucca plants. Since the Sanchez’ wanted to give us the genuine Tewa pottery experience, we made our own yucca brushes. The strips of the yucca were soaked until the end was softened. The fibers of the plant were separated by chewing on the end of the yucca stick. These fibers were then trimmed to the desired shape. When it came time to apply my slip decoration, however, I forgot my yucca brush and used a Chinese paint brush instead. As a painter, it was tempting to paint a complicated design on the surface of a pot. But I held back from that, putting a simple design on just one item, ragging onto the bottle as an experiment, and leaving the rest with a plain shiny unadulterated surface. My simple unadorned pot in the upper right corner of this post is the result of this approach.
Next post: The pit firing

The Art of Tewa Pottery - Slow is Sometimes Better

This summer marks an intense season of courses taught and courses taken. I taught courses in mosaic art and the art of Chinese Brush painting and calligraphy at McDaniel College and had the unique opportunity to study Tewa Pueblo black ware pottery from the grandchild and great-grandchild of the famous potter Maria Martinez.
Teaching and learning these art forms was as mysterious as it was engaging. On both sides it required patience, dedication and persistence. It was most effective when students and teachers alike were able to lose themselves in the process of molding the stuff of art into personal expression.
The ovoid pottery pictured at right is a master work by my teacher, Kathy (Wanpovi) Sanchez. It was produced in a pit-fire with a partial reduction process - where the smothering of flames by dried dung turns the red pottery black. The small lines on the vessel were etched in after the firing and appear to follow the natural flash points on the clay. The circular pattern in the center is a feather motif drawn in slip decoration before the firing. Ms. Sanchez often embellishes the pottery after firing with additions of coral or turquoise, as seen here. I admire the sparing way these focal points of gemstones are arranged.
I like to think of this vessel as a soul’s journey - the faintly drawn lines evoke mythological presences like figures in a dream. All is nebulous and subtle with flashes of mica adding sparks of energy to the otherwise sleepy relaxed feel of the burnished clay. This July I got a feel for what it meant to make slow pottery like this precious object - with hours of pinching coiling and burnishing devoted to a single small hand held pot. There were great lessons learned in this course about slowing down and putting the time and market economy way of thinking behind - at least temporarily. Stay tuned for my next blog on the process of creating the Tewa pottery.