On Being Selected

West Michigan Area Show

I was very fortunate to have two pieces accepted in the 2011 West Michigan Area Show at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art. 330 artists submitted 650 pieces of all different types of work. The juror John Glick accepted 116 pieces for the show. I feel honored to have been selected. I really do not know how to describe what it is like having two pieces selected.

John Glick is a nationally known ceramist from Farmington Hills Michigan. The Area show seems to always have a 2 D person as a juror that seems to skips over the ceramics and includes very few.  Now this year a clay guy, a person well known for ceramics chooses not one but two of your pieces. He likes what you do - he validates your work. Very cool stuff. It makes what I do acceptable - he gets it.

All of this is pretty heady stuff. I have been working through a change in what I do - my forms have become more organic - I recently started a blog posting - "I Have Had Another Epiphany" that I tried to talk about this but I could not finish it - the uncompleted post is as follows:

I have had another epiphany. The pots that I am making now are much different from what I have  made before. A couple of things have happened and I am not quite sure how it has happened. I know that some of the bowl forms have come from a form that I have been working on for a while.

The other form is quite new. The start of it came from a "you tube" video of a Japanese potter and part of   it has come from the other bowl form. I really like where all of this is taking me.

The new forms are simpler - In one of the classes I just finished teaching at the Kalamazoo Institute Of Arts one of my students noticed that I never take my needle tool and even out the rim of my pots - I don't cut the wobble out, I let the piece develop and become what it is. Someone else has seen this change also. Julie Devers who is charge of the Anagama program at the K I A said that my pieces have become more simpler - letting the Anagama kiln do what it does. The results that I have been getting from the Anagama kiln have had an effect on what I do. I didn't see that at first now I do. John Glick saw it also; I am going to follow this and see where it takes me.