only a few become tadpoles

"Brahms once remarked that the mark of an artist is how much he throws away.  Nature, the great creator, is always throwing things away.  A frog lays several million eggs at one sitting.  Only a few dozen of these become tadpoles, and only a few of those become frogs.  We can let imagination and practice be as profligate as nature." - Stephen Nachmanovitch

"The easiest way to do art is to dispense with success and failure altogether and just get on with it." - Stephen Nachmanovitch

I finished my intermediate ceramics class this weekend.  Although I should have been in a beginner's class, I was fearful of being constrained to make pinch pots for weeks (in retrospect I don't think this would have happened), and also the timing for the intermediate class was convenient.

Things I learned: thicker pieces have less possibility of cracking, using the Clay press in the middle clay room was easier, covering clay while it dries helps it dry more evenly, dipping clay in glaze you shouldn't let the glaze linger for more than 2-3 seconds on the piece before dumping it off, painting on glaze is going to go on pretty thin so in that case you should put multiple layers.

This was my second attempt at a lobster-themed dish.  My modus operandi: putting some organic form on a piece so as to distract from the non-symmetry and other blips in the piece.  

It is always fun to be in a shared creative space.  I could tell getting there on Saturday mornings that this could well be people's favorite spot/time of the week, the thing their minds had been dreaming about and dwelling on their projects during the week.  It is rare to be in a room of 5+ middle aged women, none talking yet all focused and happy.  You could tell the room would enter its just-right challenge/flow state.  It reminded me of a Benedictine monastery: "In a flood of words you will not avoid sin" (Prov 10:19).  Silence was typical, and when words were spoken they were more purposeful, revolving around the work itself.   There was not a lot of idle chit-chat.  

Art that does something! (holds potato salad*!) *not mine

precisely where

art that does stuff

You have to be really aware of the difference between fruitfulness and success because the world is always talking to you about your success. Society keeps asking you: “Show me your trophies. Show me, how many books have you written? Show me, how many games did you win? Show me, how much money did you make? Show me. . . .” And there is nothing wrong with any of that. I am saying that finally that’s not the question. The question is: “Are you going to bear fruit?” And the amazing thing is that our fruitfulness comes out of our vulnerability and not just out of our power. Actually it comes out of our powerlessness. If the ground wants to be fruitful, you have to break it open a little bit. The hard ground cannot bear fruit; it has to be raked open. And the mystery is that our illness and our weakness and our many ways of dying are often the ways that we get in touch with our vulnerabilities. You and I have to trust that they will allow us to be more fruitful if lived faithfully. Precisely where we are weakest and often most broken and most needy, precisely there can be the ground of our fruitfulness. That is the vision that means that death can indeed be the final healing—because it becomes the way to be so vulnerable that we can bear fruit in a whole new way. Like trees that die and become fuel, and like leaves that die and become fertilizer, in nature something new comes out from death all the time. So you have to realize that you are part of that beautiful process, that your death is not the end but in fact it is the source of your fruitfulness beyond you in new generations, in new centuries.

-Henri Nouwen

It's nice to be in a space with so many adults and so many mistakes.