Sold

 The first bowl I made sold today.

It’s the oldest piece dating from 2006.

I remember this piece how I sat on the bat and it altered the bowl.

I had just come from 

Otto 

Heinos studio and used his glaze.

Thin shiny with matte iron black decoration on rim and splashed with a sumi brush.

He’d told me that visit KID YOURE A POTTER I KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT AND YOU ARE A POTTER. DONT LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER. LISTEN TO ME I KNOW THESE THINGS.

he gave me a kiln god from his kiln.

You know what all my glazes are, he said. I feel you know this life as it is one you will make your own.

I never felt so warm and seen as I did around potters. My grandmother was a potter.

She took me to see rose cabbot at when I was 6. We laughed and played and they knew a kickwheel.

Two months after I made this Otto heino glaze bowl I moved to Pasadena to become a full time student of ceramics.

A devotee.

There was a time of hope,redness in the first months of leaving Pasadena.

In the first months of leaving Pasadena Otto heino passed away.

I was in Edwardsville. Chris.s mother sold my wheel and I was left to watch tv all day while Chris went to work. I slept and got really into health food. Bored out of my mind.

But what grounds me is this work. My one focus. Pottery.

At age 8 I decided.

I have some thoughts on this.

I’m looking at the last 18 years as a potter.

The work I’ve done on my career as a potter. I am a potter.

I have sold to a serious collector. Someone who only collects famous well made pots.

He has an eye. For my hand. The pieces my hand makes.

My style.

Me.

Just as I go over Frank black over and over again or Joni Mitchell.

Or Neil young. It’s the integrity and the clarity of their work. Their hand.

Therapist was telling me…. The work lives on after you make it meaning something special to the recipient.

And as artists we are conduits for spirit.

I give time and space for this appreciation by letting go and releasing my hand to the world.

In the last 18 years I can be proud of myself that despite not having the backbone to stick up for myself while being treated badly by Chris and his family. I made work.

I am an artist. I make work. 

I make good work from my hand.

It is no one else but mine. That is wanted.

My work is wanted.

I am wanted now in love and in work.

This means everything to me.

To look out at the studio once again to work.

After moving and being away from my work.

I’m reminded also……that.

This work will be the best in my life.

Filled with such energy because my energy is back.

I am not bogged down by the weight of hatred.

Or wondering why the hatred exists. What did I do?

I am living as me. That integrity shows in the work and in my ease of being.

Ease of life.

I can finally feel it.

I am so light and happy.

Thankful beyond belief that….. I made this choice for myself for the first time to go back to where I’m happiest Pasadena. Doing what I’m happiest doing. Ceramics and loving who I love genuinely.

No guilt. No chasing. No assholes allowed.