Category Archives: Uncategorized

In Praise of Partners

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Alan has painted plinths, mopped brows, calmed nerves and polished vessels without a single complaint. 

I think I might have over-stretched myself a bit recently.  I have committed to too many exhibitions and commissions in a short space of time and found myself with a bit of a problem.  This blog is in recognition of the part of my team which always seems to come up with a solution to this kind of problem.  He does it with more cheer than I can muster on most normal days and with greater efficiency than anyone else I know.  In fact, he leaves me feeling more exhausted by his efforts than I was before but, quite frankly, I could not have got through the last few weeks without him!

 

My darling husband has not only been responsible for bringing me hot drinks and lightly poached eggs whilst I have been fighting the ‘Mother of all Colds’,

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Sometimes I have been feeling like a scalded cat
he has also shopped for buckets of ice-cream; he has visited the chemist for the most vile cough linctus ever created; he has listened with patience and tolerance whilst I have alternately moped like a kicked puppy and scratched like a scalded cat;

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At other times I just wanted to crawl away and lick my wounds.
he has painted plinths late into the evening; he has waited at our private view pouring wine and engaging our guests with charm and wit and he has polished my vessels.

I have mentioned the wet polishing of vessels before.  It is a painstaking, time consuming, messy, cold, wet, unpleasant activity!  My other half has polished 21 vessels this week – at an average of an hour per vessel.  Well, you do the maths!  Even if I had been well and fit it would have been utterly impossible for me to get done all that needed doing unless someone took from me the load of doing the polishing.  One word of warning though.  He has done such an amazing job on the polishing that he might have constructed for himself a cross that he now has to carry for all time!!

Alan, thank you. I found something which says it far better than I can –  this is for you.

A little bit of a Muse

I picked up The Muse by Jessica Burton the other day.  I bought it because it was in the Sunday Times best sellers list and I needed to read something by somebody new.  It is different to many books that I have read in the past and I am enjoying it greatly.  What I had not expected was that it might resonate with my own thoughts quite so much.

I am left with little choice this week but to quote from it:

When I began receiving public acknowledgement for a private act, something was essentially lost.  My writing became an axis upon which all my identity and happiness hinged.  It was now outward looking, a self-conscious performance.  I was asked to repeat the pleasure again and again, until the facsimile of my act became the act itself.

I know exactly how this character is feeling!  A friend spotted it in me a couple of weeks back and asked what I was planning to do about it.  The truth is that I have no idea.

 

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Whilst it is hugely flattering that people like my work, I am easily bored and I fear it will soon be time to move on.

I am hugely excited and flattered that people like my current work but success brings some weird emotions.  I want to make for myself!  I miss the devil-may-care attitude and I feel cramped by the prescriptiveness of what I am making.  I broke my New Year’s resolution to include something experimental in each firing within about 3 weeks because I was working so hard to satisfy the demand for my work.

 

I am dreadfully aware of how ungrateful this sounds and I am sorry for that but I confess to being scared at the moment that this is who I am.  I have come up with an idea that people seem to like and now I am stuck on a production line.

To miss-quote Jessica Burton,

I have forgotten the genesis of my impulse; unbothered, pure creation, existing outside the parameters of success and failure.

I appreciate that this must seem rather conceited but I am easily bored and I have a feeling that it might be almost time to beat a retreat and start again before I forget why I make things.   Who am I?