bodner045

How difficult is it to keep things simple stupid?   Here in Costa Rica we saw the chickens that laid the eggs and bought them from the owner.   The eggs are fresh and tasty.   I cannot check the date on the end of the carton.   There is no carton.   They come hand delivered in a recycled large tray.   I have not seen a Styrofoam egg carton since I arrived. So what happened? Did we need more eggs than we could supply without the big stinky chicken farms?   Is it simpler to run to the store and buy them?   I think the answer is very complicated.   We changed.   And, I think the word quality was lost.   And then there is that industrial revolution thing. I am guilty.   Just one egg is not enough.   I bought too much stuff for my studio thinking it would make it easier.   When you visit the potters in the pueblos of New Mexico there is proof the number of tools we think we need is a bit much.   I love my tools. ...

What kind of potter or artist do you want to be?   Can you force your style?   Do you want to learn just one thing or lots and everything? Do you want to make functional ware or make a very pure form of art? Can you tell what kind of potter you are? Is it important to be only one kind of potter/sculpture? Generally, I have found the more I learn about different techniques and ways to fire etc., the better.   When you open up to new ideas and maybe a different way to build or fire you begin to have more choices.   Sometimes I wish I did not know so many ways to do things.   It would be easier and with tunnel vision you can make more progress faster and possibly become an expert in some area.   Ceramics is full of so many directions as are most of the arts that it is hard to know which way to turn.   Experimenting even when the experiment does not work is a learning process and adds so much to your knowledge. Put your eggs in one basket and you li...

A dear sweet friend who had been through a very intense experience of a dying father, finally had to let go.  The father had lingered and held on to her and finally when friends forced her to leave the room and take a short break, he died.  She had to let go as well.  Her friends took her outside and sat her in a lawn chair, removed her shoes and put her bare feet in the grass.  This experience did in fact ground her.  She found the strength to continue with her life. Planting and flipping dirt may help many of us get grounded.  Whenever I lose a friend I want to plant something to prove life continues and to see things grow. Those feelings also happen while working in clay, dirt.  A friend of mine whose beautiful young daughter died “grounded” herself by learning to make pots.  The pain never totally left but it did significantly ease the pain. My students get their hands busy and all of a sudden they relax and with the sensuousness of ...

Talking to a friend, he said.” So what is your book about?  “  I started to laugh a little being embarrassed trying to sum up about 45 unedited chapters.  He knew what I meant immediately.  He is an old friend and a retired preacher I knew in Knoxville when I taught middle school. “So it is just like when people used to ask me on Tuesday what Sunday’s sermon would be about.” It goes something like this in my own interpretation.  There is the book I plan to write.  There is the presentation you hear.  There is what I actually write and the book you remember me writing.  Sounds like a good explanation to me! I have been writing this book off and on for about 10 years.   I started scribbling it on paper rapidly in outline form when I was at a conference with my husband. A conference offers me a nice clean quiet hotel room where I can think with no interruptions.  A first I could not write fast enough and I knew exactly what I wanted, a...

The following is a chapter from my book, Getting There, This was written while staying with a friend in Costa Rica. The Costa Rican laborer’s hands may be the roughest hand I have ever shook.   The second roughest hand was my friend Mikey’s daughter.   Her hand was an American cowgirl hand. My husband is a professor and writer and he has very soft hands.   My son is an artist with very long thin fingers.   My daughter’s hands are like princess’s hands, tiny soft and small, waiting for white lacy gloves. Hands lead our way to the senses.   We shake hands, we feed ourselves sometimes with a fork and sometimes we hold onto a slippery mango. I explain to my pottery students that their hands are their finest tools.   The most expensive tool will not necessarily produce the finest pot.   You see this as the aspiring young to the clay student asks, “So what kind of wheel or kiln do you use? Or what kind of camera should I buy?”   Through your hands ...