2021. a rare selfie + sentimental novella incoming, one i've been thinking about for a while.
so, this is me, myself and i vs. what i make. to the right, a quiet pot. disaster area to the left. idk what i'm standing on. don't look over there!
to be frank, i am... really obsessive about all things lol. moving between passionate / probably unhealthy is a constant oscillation and i often miss what's right in front of me for what's right next to it. this was a good pot. i didn't like how i finished it, but it was a good pot. then i bumped into it not a week out of the kiln while moving some huge fern i thought might look nice in the space. it didn't. so it goes, spend hours building only to see it in pieces later. all good, make another, yadayada. this one did have a lot of significance though.
when i was at UNF in 2015, @trevortdunn gave us an assignment to make a large pot. I got way obsessive. I made and remade, made and remade. or flopped i guess.
36" tall thrown and coiled. okay. i was only one year in to this really but i was determined, ¡ could do it!! but turns out i could not and the shame of failure ate me all the way up. i was surrounded by talented artists and i couldn't finish a simple (lol it was not simple) assignment. went a bit cuckoo that year.
i like to think i finished it this night here in 2021 six years later (????? what the hell liza what the fuck...) and yes I'd failed ceramics that semester, in case you were wondering Imao. but i sincerely appreciated trevor's patience with me then and still do. worst part of it all was he seemed to believe i could do it more than I did and that, my friends, is where the problem started in the first place.
so this exceptionally-late-to-the-critique pot that doesn't wholly exist anymore is a tribute to that shitty feeling, whether it was/is self-doubt or fear or some super fucky insecurity - hello, i see you, please be on your way.
that said all said. i’m here now, eight years after failing ceramics in college. couldn’t stop if i wanted to.
so: come to class, fuck around, find out. it's all good, no one is getting a grade, there's plenty of time, we're still learning.
I'm looking to make some big things again here in the near future — would love if you joined me. it is nice to remind yourself of what you can do sometimes.
