just recently i have been reconsidering the reasons why i am making pots. this tends to happen occasionally, ebbing and flowing as the months continue. i guess sometimes i have to write about it too.
i read an article where warren mackenzie, both a hero and foe of sorts for me, said,
When I started to make pots, I wanted to make ‘important’ pots that would reflect my ideas. This, of course, assumed that my ideas (at age 21) were important. I make pots now because I enjoy the act of making.**
thus begins my treatise.
i found warren’s view at 21 years of age the same as my own. i find myself battling the idea of fame and how that fits in pottery. i want to be famous. but i don’t. i find it unwholesome to want that for some reason. why do i want to be famous? notoriety, legacy, financial gain, popularity, just to be famous. i can’t nail it but i think those reasons are some/all of it. looking at other potters’ works, i see certain shapes and prices and ideas and colors and locations that all add up in my head as this perfect equation to become a famous potter. and i started asking myself, what is important about their work?
this idea of importance is really interesting to me. how so? here’s how. what about pottery is important? is pottery important? why? are my pots important? should they be important? is it important to make important pots?
as i pondered these questions, i began to see why i didn’t like this idea that i wanted to make important pots. I identified with his 21-year-old self, wanting to make important things but finding it futile. I think I am finding that trying to make “important” is impossible. It can’t be fabricated, it has to be inborn, intrinsic. Trying to define why something is important is both the easiest thing and the hardest thing. You put words to it easily enough, but then there is this feeling that it just is important whether you can speak to it or not. I found that Warren’s model of importance was circular and would never make sense. He wants his ideas to be important, but what is important to him are his ideas. It is stuck within himself. It can’t move beyond that. i also think that his latter words, “i make pots now because i enjoy the act of making,” are more universal. they apply to people outside himself. or perhaps it is because his latter ideas are not haughty and are instead reaching to personal values of play and enjoyment. they seem more pure to me. after all the words and ideas and pressures and dirt are cleaned off, what lies beneath is this simple and powerful need to play.
do i still want to be famous? yes. i can’t lie to myself. but i would rather be famous for something other than making “important” pots and having ideas likewise. so then, the struggle continues forward, trying to grasp how to make pots that are outside myself. in an unfinished and raw sort-of-way, I had jotted down a few things in my sketchbook that I deemed valuable for me, probably because it was important to do this at that time. [audience laughs]
1. Get my work out to people.
2. Convey an essence of God.
3. Have fun.
a little look into these 3 values:
1. i want people to have my pots and to use my pots and to think know that they enrich their lives.
2. i make pots because God has given me a wonderful itch to make pots. it is a most fulfilling thing. i want other people in the world to have/see/use/hold a pot of mine and then miraculously understand that God made them and loves them and has use for them, similar to me making a pot. i want these folks to know that they are needed and wonderful and beautiful.
3. i want to have fun. i don’t want to chain my futile ideas to my pots and only make pots that have throwing rings in them or flared rims because that is a Phill pot and so it has to have those things. for more on that tangent. I want to enjoy what i do and i believe with that will come beautiful things.
and that’s all folks,
phill
**Ceramics Monthly, Sept. 1989, Pg. 55
