Fifty Shades of Grace #3

The studio had been collecting dust for 20 years or so.  It is a real challenge to do pottery on your own when it is hard to walk, when the strength in your arms is gone.  The tools, kiln and wheel were all in good shape.  Boxes of glaze materials were lined up in order, oxides in their jars.  Bags of clay had long since dried into 25 lb. bricks but could be revived with water and effort.  There was a Voulkos poster on the wall along with a cartoon depicting the choice between one's studio and one's spouse; as if there could be one!

Audrey died at 92.  But one never stops being a potter once you've caught the fever.  For the last decade we had been friends and fellow pilgrims.  We spoke of family, politics, friends, history and pottery, always pottery.  It was part of our bond.  As her family prepared her home for the estate sale they asked if I would come by and take anything I wanted from her studio before it all disappeared.  They wanted me to have first choice.  It would mean a lot to them.  It would mean a lot to me.

As I rummaged through the stuff of a lifetime it became clear that there was more there than the remnants of a "hobby."   I hate that word applied to ceramic art.  Webster defines "hobby" as "an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation."  That one doesn't sell one's pottery for a living or get paid to teach it, or even if your proficiency doesn't reach the level of craft, it doesn't mean that what you are doing with clay is not "art":  "The expression of a transcendent moment of creativity."  You don't learn how to mix your own glazes, fire your own kiln, crush and knead your own material and hang a Peter Voulkos poster on your wall for a "hobby" for crying out loud!  Audrey found pleasure and relaxation in the clay, certainly.  But there was so much more than that. 

You could see it in her pieces.  The family had organized those left in storage on a table top.  They were all about the same size.  You could see what weight of clay she had grown confident in centering. 

You could see it in the dusty tools left behind.  Batik stamps, dental tools, seed pods, patches of fabric and children's toys all used to decorate, all used to record discovery in the clay.

You could see it in the score of dried out glaze buckets, the residue of experiment.

Each simple piece of pottery now organized on a dusty table reflected a texture tried, a stamp imprinted, a variance in glaze and the journey an artist was making to find her voice.

This housewife, farmer, historian, nature-loving mother/grandmother found in clay a medium for her moments of transcendent creativity.  It drew her to the solitude of her studio where her reservoirs were filled again and again.  That her pieces had no price tags, that her resume listed no exhibits or awards, made her no less an artist than the few whose names we remember.

I saw my own process in hers.  The same process for most potters I imagine.  I thought of the day when my kids have to organize my own dusty studio, scratching their heads over what to do with tools and equipment and books and boxes of stuff I found invaluable.  I suppose they will find it a hassle to dispose of such stuff and the memories that go with it.  But they will know, as my friends do of their mom, that clay was one of the ways a potter finds some peace in this world and within.

In spite of their insistence that I have "first choice," the only thing I could take from the table was a perfect tiny bowl made by my friend.  It will go in my collection next to the Hamada, the Ferguson and the Leach that my kids will have to find a home for after I am gone.  But the Audrey is as much a treasure as any other.