Making Bad Pots
I'm Uncontainable but Things Rise Up With the Doing
I am not in great spirits today. I had a dream that I was working on a team with a person whom I adore but if written, I’d make enemies. That is a strange thing to know. I could also make new friends. It was probably the end of the podcast last night that was about a woman who wrote a book about an unliked human who had a big impact on the world, whose characters were unbothered by others’ opinions but who was bothered in life. We can only be so stoic. The night before I had a dream of a big sign with the name Margott. I was born Margot. Oftentimes, I want it back.
I will walk down to the snowdrops today and hope they’ve begun their journey above ground. Our Hippolyta — usually flowering by now, have not even poked through this cold, heavy, unfun. Today is a day of seeing my smallness and not finding comfort in it.
It is winter, always. Crisp, refreshing, bright, quiet, I know these things — but still, it darkens me. Here is yesterday’s enthusiasm.
MAKING BAD POTS
Clay calls in winter. This year, my bag of unopened, drying clay whimpered. I pressed a finger into the big block. It gave a little, but is bound to crumble with any handling.
I applied to a local clay school and after sending four emails, I finally got a no. “The class isn’t for beginners,” she said. I tried to sell myself, but I’ve never written a resume and I don’t love the exaggeration that comes with their construction. I am so literal. I told her I’d practice on a friend’s wheel before class begins — she’ll teach me. I told her that I make jewelry, sometimes starting with clay, I make books, and other things, too. No matter. It’s no wonder she said no —though I have much more faith in eager people. Her no put a fire under my ass and for that I am grateful. I cut up my drying, whimpering clay, added the chunks and water to the bag and kneaded it for a few days. My first pots were built with a very sticky substance, but after a week, I’d already learned a lot from the rehabilitation.
My friend Lindsay has an underused kiln in a dreamy clay studio in her old stone home. She guided me as I centered my blob. We chattered as I made a cup, transformed it into a bowl, then a cup again, tall, then small, then nothing. Still, she was encouraging and together we came up with a plan to fill her kiln in a month.
My life is so jammed with making things, writing, and photographing that most surfaces in my studio feel as if they’ll never come clean and that it would take a shovel, a blindfold, and great effort to get to the bottom of it all. In the night, I swiped left and right on the clearest of them — and with the middle open, unrolled my clay Sendak, cut off a piece of nice, malleable clay, and got to work.
I made a lot of bad pots and went to bed a few nights in a row feeling down. By the fourth night I looked over other winters’ efforts and picked up where I left off then — with inkwells, small paint pots, little animals, and other surfaces for drawing on. I also studied — and copied — the work of other clay artists whose work I adore and through daily use, inspires me toward this endeavor. I felt immediately better with my next round of equally bad pots. I crushed and put my firsts into a container filled with water. I watch it daily — this creature I am bringing back from the dead.
Comfort comes with repetition. I started opening my bag of clay — not just at night — but in the mornings, too. I rolled it out and cut tiles during our Monday meeting. I write, scribble, and type with clay-dry hands, my laptop and journal filled with dust, the shift key stuck. My coats, shirts, and pants are all dusted and smeared with clay — I am sure there is clay in the sauna mixing with sweat making sauna creatures who come alive with the company. At night, listening to Lex Fridman and Stephen Bartlett, and finally music, I lose track of the night for the first time in a long while, and crawl into be the next day.
My pile of pots and animals is growing and shrinking and growing and disappearing back into a sludge like my first pots on the wheel. I feel good about it until I wake up and wonder why I am starting another new thing. I am all journey.
Things rise up with the doing.
ps: It feels important, though obvious, to address the contradiction betwixt my writing and my photographs. I am a messy person. Everyone who visits (or drives by) will know this. My words share this truth. My photographs make me a liar. I move the piles to the floor and table and wherever else to get a nice photograph. This isn’t news in 2025. I don’t know why I feel compelled to tattle.
pps: Winter Past
I do like these past treasures and I shall find my way back!
Fuzzy tear with teeth....
Yes in the journey! And even more yes on the wabi sabi of all your work. There is so much beauty in seeing the making within a piece.