Day by Day

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes
- WS

I know, how terrible to start off a piece of writing this way, with lines from probably the most-quoted poem ever. Terrible, also, that I am sitting reading that poem, from an old paperback anthology, outside against the west-facing wall of my studio in the last of the November sun today. I should be working - I have a ton of work to do — pots to trim, and glaze, and the kiln to fire. I can see down into the arroyo from here, leaning back in this green chair, and a last yellow cottonwood reaches up from the swirly arroyo sand, that ever-shifting channel shaped by water. I should be finishing the last pots of the year right now & getting ready for a little show of my newest work at the gallery on Lena Street — the first in a couple of years. I think three years.

Naturally — this is terrible — a day like this is exactly when you want to just lean back and open an old book, read something you’ve read a million times. This fall I’ve been thinking back, a lot of times, on the start of my studio, when I was firing the first kiln I had — I’d bought a pile of firebrick from another potter leaving town and I built a little catenary-arch chamber. Just about every afternoon, back then, after an early start (no emails) I’d be outside, resting, reading. I worked at an easy, careless, pace.

Back then I used to do things like this, I say to myself today, looking up from my book & into the arroyo, justifying. I used to think about things. Which do you prefer?

I still have a few pieces around from those first firings, and I’ve actually taken them out this fall, dusted them off, & put them up on a worktable where I can watch them. There’s something I’m looking for — I see in it in some of these old pots — an easy carelessness, not confidence, I wouldn’t say, but a wondering, questioning, openness to anything. How far can I stretch this platter open — how thin can it get?

Pretty thin, I discovered, as in the piece above circa 1999. Too thin to sell, and so I still have it. How do people do those brushstrokes - just dip in iron oxide, or what? How will those blobs look, melted into the glaze? I see my own questions, looking at these old pieces, back then I did a lot of wondering, and I kind of want to get back to that. This fall a lot of my new work looks suspiciously like things I made twenty years ago. I’m taking time to contemplate. The beauty of inflections…or the beauty of innuendoes?

Or maybe — I flip to a new page, randomly, I love to do this with this particular Vintage paperback circa 1959, and start a new poem — maybe I’m just looking for an excuse to keep leaning back against the wall in the cold sun & put off glazing for another few moments.

A few of the new pots are out. The rest — this is terrible, and so typical — will be out in the days just before the opening. This bottle, above, I like because it shows that inexact shrug of the not-quite-perfect. That comes easy when you’re starting in clay, the inexact, and then you spend years trying to get back to it. Here I succeeded. The glaze is a dolomitic mixture with a lot of clay, and on top of the greenish glass, a blob of the iron-rich brush. Back then I did a lot of swooping dark brush marks.

I’m also doing a lot of totally experimental pieces. Which I would have done then. This one, above, is great, but what is it — a rock? With corners? Maybe. You know the thing about that poem is that there’s another world alongside the visible & tangible one we’re supposed to be in, and sometimes when you look at something, maybe like a blackbird flying, the other world is just fleetingly suggested — the unseen green world of the imagination. Just as the blackbird flies out of sight — I’m sure you know the familiar lines — it marks the edge of one of many circles. I think that’s what this rock wants to do. The edges part — maybe not the circles.

Meanwhile I close the well-worn book & get up out of the green chair. Back in the studio I resume glazing, stirring up the buckets, swirling the thick brush in something dark. I get a piece or two done, and glance at the time — my fleeting window for work has just closed. It is dark outside. I must get back to the house & to the desk. That’s the other theme of this show, the scramble for time to work, the effort to regain the hermetic & concentrated time when you can devote yourself to the studio and all your thinking about where you used to be, and where you’re going, just disappears — leaving you in the present moment.

If you’re around Santa Fe December 10 or 11, do stop in the Lena Street gallery. See the latest work in this new show called Day by Day…stop for a moment & say hello!

— Theo Helmstadter
theo@greenriverpottery.com