Tree of Knowledge

I went to pick up pieces at the kiln, one had cracked on refire. I threw it in the can after the master complained that he likes what I do, wants to teach me, but that if I don't learn then the P C for the Arts is no place for me.

He asked again and again who my teachers are (because he thinks I have to learn about "handbuilding") and that there are many at the P C of the Arts who could "help" me, but how could I say that my teachers are only the clay?

I may then have said that teachers only teach their own virus and the ones they have been taught. I said I learn from my work and I admire Gareth Mason and wood fire effects and could have said Callas or Voulkos, especially their attitude which is not punitive.

The master says, he's  your teacher then (Mason). I reply no, I'm just glad he's in the world and I admire and identify his work, but I am seeking to split form into pieces. I don't bother saying what work is banal and commonplace because tyrants who throw their voice around have favorites and the rest can skate. Their teaching, so called, is mainly opinions and jokes. They cannot teach what they don't know, that being that the essence of form is the nothingness of design and the liquid of color that flows around it.

All the righteous are offended. I have offended print teachers, ceramic teachers, Mennonite teachers, English teachers, poets and tennis bigshots. I might be onto something. The outcome is that I want to tear the top off with the bottom so the form can represent the detasseled torsos of our time. So people are like corn stalks. This is meant to stir compassion for the pain of extinction and malformation introduced everywhere in the world. These oppositions are much in the air. I sent  a beautiful piece of writing, Reset Blue Superstitution Farewell Blue Superposition in dialect and dialectic to a place and the editor wanted to know, in the rejection, if it was a Markov chain-- a random process that undergoes transitions from one state to another. I replied, thinking to make some headway, that it was a Mono-ha, another thing to be ignorant of, and the editor on the other end said I could have said all that in three sentences. There are rule givers in power everywhere. I have planned to get ten of this Flower Guys, the one shown above here is #2, two more are made, but it may be prevented (but wasn't). I'm coming to believe that if a piece can be photographed it is inferior, for color is everywhere and always changing.

There was some kiln-spit off the embedded feldspar onto other pieces, master said, not that he knew it was buried feldspar, and that the bottoms are "unfinished," hence unstable. I said I can glaze the surface to prevent the spit, they are hardly glazed at all, and sand the bottom. He thinks they should have feet, is utterly afraid of the spirit. I have since reinforced the bottoms. But now they are falling from other directions, the plasticity of the clay at 2300 degrees causes the "arms" to fall. That's OK. It leads to further curvature in the work (Dec. 17). But there are three or four absolute show pieces in the yard than need plaster of paris bases to stand. Will get to it.

This is a good time to repeat the quote from Kierkegaard at the head of Forms of the Formless:  As soon as a man appears who brings something of the primitive along with him, who says “let the world be what it likes, I take my stand on a primitiveness which I have no intention of changing to meet with the approval of the world,” at that moment a metamorphosis takes place in the whole of nature, the castle that has been lying under a spell for a hundred years opens and the angels have something to do, and watch curiously to see what will come of it, because that is their business.
Quote of the Day 6 July 2015: "If I don't learn then the P C for the Arts is no place for me."