Thursday 7 December 2017

Arriving and leaving...and arriving

It was seven weeks ago today that I arrived in Italy in anticipation of an eight-week mentored residency at La Meridiana International School of Ceramics (with funding support of the Ontario Arts Council, which is gratefully acknowledged).  It has been time spent working and learning, such as you lose some...and you win some! One teapot - one of the visually best I've made - completely jettisoned off its handle and into the glaze bucket. Evidence of poor making; ergo, lesson learned.  This teapot is also one of the visually best teapots I've made.  By no means is it "perfect" (to one's own standard), yet it perfectly encompasses so many of the things that I've learned in the last seven weeks.  Both the making and the finishing are not at all my usual style:  a pulled handle, hot wax resist, a seated lid, scratched-through glazing, and not to mention a cracked rim deftly repaired-at-the-drying stage (by mentor John Colbeck).  It took an inordinate amount of time to get on track with my time and purpose here, to make "Purposeful Porcelain", but I shall leave next week having just arrived at where I next need to be.

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