Chasing plastic

I'm nearing the end of this making cycle, this one being three months to fill the kiln with all my work. Since being here at the Energyxchange, Will and I have shared our firings, as well as the labor of the firing. This time around I'm filling the whole load, and then Will is doing a full load of his own afterwards. So my summer melted away quickly with slinging lots of clay, and *chasing plastic, as my potter neighbor, Michael Kline aptly puts it.  It's great to have the whole kiln load, because there are some sweet spots that usually Will puts his pots in that now I have the challenge to fill, one of which, being the top shelf with tall pots.  So I'm making taller pitchers and vases, two part style, which is much easier for me to throw well.

Now's the time when the potters inner voices chime out: "make this, make that, isn't there time to make 12 more of these?" ....and so on and so on.  The momentum has been building, my hands are all warmed up, but one must bring to a halt this flurry of wet pots and get ready to fire the kiln, the final performance of this symphony.

But, wait...there's at least a few more days I can make a few more pots....

 

*chasing plastic refers to all the pots in progress you have wrapped under plastic in the studio, where timing, and the subtle nuances of how wet or dry pots are means so much to a potter, and where you are working against time to finish those pots under plastic before they dry out, spraying them down, working on them here and there, covering them up overnight, airing them out during the day.  It's all a dance, requiring a perfectly timed execution, which is so individualized for each potter, where in the end when you look at a full ware cart of pots the simplicity of repetition and accumulation feels quite nice.