Thursday, February 16, 2012

Sometimes the Wheel Would Have Been Faster ...

I hand build all my sculptures, including the ones that may look like they have been done on the wheel. There is just something missing when I do any wheel work.

The preliminary stage of this piece I'm working on could have been done on the wheel. I was thinking about this as I was building up the sides. There is just something that I enjoy when I hand build, something moves within me, something reverent; paying homage to this lowly material that has taken millions of years to form and now I'm touching, feeling it.

Whenever I pinch out a ball of clay, I figured early potters must have done pretty much the same thing. How incredible it is that the basic material and technique have not changed in tens of thousands of years. Our two hands, our ten fingers and a lump of clay becoming fantastic creations, limited only by our imaginations.

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