artist statement

In my art experience, I rarely experienced the harsh reality of failure and dissatisfaction with a piece of work. Questionable beginnings always worked themselves out into provocative endings. I controlled the aperture; I directed the acrylics; I commanded the pen and ink; and yet, I succumb to the clay body. I never before battled with a medium as I have with clay over the past quarter. In consideration of my projects, each one fails to embody the grandiose blueprints I mentally composed.

Relatively unimpressed, I observed the critique of my peers’ pinch pots on my first day of the class (note to someone: adding the class over a week late in the middle of a collegiate soccer season puts you behind more than a few paces). My lack of admiration for my classmates’ pinch pots quickly melted as I attempted to handle the clay in preparation for the coil pot. My unjustified, preconceived confidence quickly vanished, and I can tell you it is a humbling experience to come to tears over wet dirt…I may have questioned my sanity once or twice.

In conjunction with this assignment, however, I also considered the existential reasoning behind art, which initiated an embrace of imperfections. In my mind, the coil pots needed to show the process to achieve the finished piece. Successfully, each work embodied a compilation of transition, not simply from one coil to the next, but also from a need for perfection to a freedom in raw, unrestricted expression. After the bisque firing, I glazed two of the coil vessels reflecting the theme of imperfection and emphasizing the “hand-made” quality—still hoping for impeccable results, however. Humbled again, I glumly evaluated the glaze that obstinately covered the attempted wax relief. My anticipated triumph disintegrated at the ceramic reality in my hands.

After a time of unrefined engagement with the clay, I transitioned back to straight lines and right angles with the template process in slab construction. Making boxes, at first posed a difficult challenge, but with time and repetition it became second nature. This type-A artist could handle tarpaper and slab rollers all day. With newfound confidence, I developed a great plan for a beautiful clock made out of slab vessels—I seem to quickly forget I am not a professional at this whole ceramics gig. Needless to say, the clock solely exists in templates and conceptions.

With relative apprehension, I committed to slab construction as my technique for the final projects. My frustration peaked at the realization that my strengths would not include towards creative expression, but rather a formulated method. This approach requires precision, which I achieved by cutting slab after slab and constructing box after box. Yet, when I received the text message (from a peer who unloaded my work from the kiln) that read, “bad news,” my hopes for one final project to end in success shattered. Apparently there are structural cracks in some of the large boxes—enough of them that my design will be incomplete without significant alterations.

So, here I am, flying home from California (my soccer team lost to Stanford today), with an overwhelming sense of failure—artistically, athletically, academically inadequate. Yet, in reflection of other artists and people who inspire me, the source of inspiration stems not from any one final, but rather the innumerable transitions that contribute to the shaping and molding of the process. I sit in frustration and angst (particularly for what I will make of my surviving boxes), but hope that somehow this transitory period will yield greater refinement of myself.