I would park, and walk in, and despite himself, my teacher would be pleased. I'd set out bisqueware I'd bravely made in my own little studio, and he would look dubiously, yet somehow happily, at the forms.

Not to be too grumpy like Monet, but something bugs me about ‘wild’ clay.

My seventh and eighth grade art teacher is my model for experiencing this particular shift in awareness, this startling up out of a slumber, this sudden desire to renovate.

Any creative space, a clay studio, a garden shed, a piano bench, is a collection of necessary tools and supplies, some of which you put there intentionally and some of which just ended up there or were given to you.

Clay is a soft forgiving material, the final product after a mountain has been washed to the sea. Clay also is a bright and hard mirror of conceit. You can see your reflection, always.

I hesitated at the end of class, the new teapot poised over the reclaim bucket. Wait - I could actually use this.

The permanence of stoneware is one of its satisfactions, and another satisfaction, more significant, is its ultimate imperfection – there's always a little background noise.

Not everyone's work can get noticed, not everyone stays working through to the end, not every pot lovingly made in a home studio that's been lovingly built gets very far, and these pots never made it more than thirty feet from their kiln.

Instinctively, as you start on a path you're unsure of, you look for help and it comes obliquely, in ways you don't always recognize at first.

A surprising change had taken place. It is so not true that stoneware is an indelible permanent material. The plates were not that good anymore.