Drive

By tapping into our creativity we can get a glimpse of our true inner self and a life path that is in harmony with that. I, like most people get up out of bed and before long I'm thinking about the million things I need to do to make my life work and if i let myself race off into that day after day I can begin to feel like i'm spinning my wheels and life is void of meaning, Eyor (the donkey in winnie the pooh) and I are moaning 'it doesn't matter anyway.' As much as I can I take time to quiet myself because I am not my thoughts, I am much more, I am a divine, wild thing, I am always discovering and rediscovering myself by listening to what exists in the quiet corners of me and exploring the world around me. Most every morning I drag into any one of a variety of coffee shops around town, order my espresso and reconnect with the people of the world and nature. A bluejay is announcing something from the pin oak and maybe he found what he was looking for because hes making a different call now not so urgent. In the coffee shop experience I am transformed and ready to live into what a day holds. Many times i get a little piece of quiet there, I listen to music, absorb sunshine and dont really think about my to do list until I am ready to. This little thing I have created in my life in order to respect my spiritual nature. There are days when I have to bust some ass to get things done, I finished a bathroom project i have been working on for 2 days at four this morning, but I nearly always take the time to respect myself with time in the morning and I dont jump into outer life until all of me is ready to. In that time i exist in a timelessness to remember who I really am. I wake up to color and smells and sounds and the essences of people around me and what the world feels like. My imagination awakens, I ask myself, if I were a kid and I could do anything I wanted to in a day what would I do, and the little kid in me is ecstatic about this and the voice of my child is heard and I may have to go cut out someones plumbing that day but its so I can buy a strawberry milkshake and watch bats at sundown in the park and make a an art piece called mountain drive and pay for the drive through the mountains that inspired the piece. If you think you cant do stuff,you cant have stuff in your life its because you cant imagine it, and maybe your not willing to give up less important things so that you can. Imagination has long been suppressed by reason but i tell you this... we do indeed create our worlds with our imagination and reason is the servant of what we imagine, so if your life is boring or you work too hard or its too tragic or whatever, imagine how you want your life to be everyday and then be faithful to what you imagine. Here's a universal truth; you are now living what you have imagined for yourself. If you think life happens to you, it would do you good to stretch your world view, to stretch your spiritual view, and when you do this you'll see that you need to take the wheel because... you... are the one driving.

Change is not easy even for the most mutable people but it is a for certain thing especially in this age we are living in. I find it challenging to stay peaceful even with knowing the changes ahead clear the way to a future that I have dreamed of and imagined for myself, I can not know how things will play out exactly and that makes me a little uneasy. I have that same hope for the changing world. Old things must die for new things to be born. Peace and courage to us all.

Sheilds Up

Had an open house today at my studio. The world feels new today. A move in the direction I want to go has done wonders for my mood about my world. I have been finishing a construction project and I am finally done, I can breathe now. I set up for my open house this morning in my Tower Grove studio, I had good conversations with people who came to look at my work, friends came by and hung out for a while and I sold a few pots. I am inspired to make plans and follow them, to shift my life. There are still obstacles, I have a lot to do but I feel like I can today. I have had some days recently where I am drowning in a feeling of hopelessness but I think that feeling is coming from outside of me. I must push out my opposition and surround myself with environments and people who harmonize with my vision of my life. I tiptoe through a field of sleeping demons, I hope they don't read my blog, at least not until I am at a place of safety.

Big round coil pots

This pot is a 20" diameter pot, don't know yet how I will fire it, my electric kilns are 17". I've had a craving for big round pots. This one is inspired by a trip I made to Las Vegas NM, lots different from the Las Vegas, Nevada, this is a historic town with mostly old adobe and clapboard houses. Me and friends visited this interesting old guy named Miguel who I think was a retired doctor. He had this spanish sytle house that was built around a courtyard, it was adobe and he and his wife were rehabbing it. There was a round pot sitting outside his door that has been on my mind since I was there and I've wanted to build some like it for a while. This pot is my first of many I hope that explore the characteristics of the pot I saw at Miguels. The other unforgettable thing about Miguels was his Mango habanero salsa, 12 jalepenos and 1 habenero, it was so good I was crying.

I rebuilt the firebox and made a few other adjustments on my raku dragon kiln. It has been firing beautifully but the grate burned out at the end of the last firing so I put in some 1/2 inch black pipe and the grate from my grill on top of that. I finished making the changes to it at around 10PM when my friend Peter showed up willing to help fire it. I didn't have the wood all ready yet and some of the pots weren't even glazed and neither of us had eaten anything yet so we had a lot to do before we could get the firing underway. Anyway I wanted to heat up the brick slow because the castable I had used wasn't dry yet and there was a good amount of moisture in the bricks, and... I put a freshly glazed wet platter on the top shelf...soppin wet. Peter made a little fire in the new firebox and we burned with the lid open for an hour or so. At about 850F we heard something break and I was afraid it was the soggy platter, later we found it was a thick planter in the bottom of the chamber. We reached about 1925F and everything matured beautifully except for a couple of refire cups, the platter was brilliant!...a nice coppery oil luster. We finished up between 3 and 4 AM, covered with black soot, tired and happy.

Unknown Values

I went to see a documentary film about an autistic boy who finds healing with horses for the symptoms that cause him suffering. His parents take him on a journey to Mongolia where humans first domesticated horses in search of something, anything that could help their son. Many times 'abnormalities' are an extreme or an accentuation of something that exists in each of us humans and maybe a move towards evolution complete with uncomfortable symptoms. Each of us is like the autistic person in a way, on a day to day basis searching for what it is that clicks with us, makes us feel normal and a part of the world.

Last night someone I met just recently invited me to a bar to listen to music and except for the appreciation of music I felt a little bit alien; this was not a natural habitat for me. My friend would introduce me and say 'this is Marvel, shes an artist' and she would say about herself 'I've never been artistic or creative in any way'. I think she is mistaken in saying that; many times people limit the idea of creative to paint on a canvas or pencil on a drawing board or the sculpting of clay in the studio. People are truly her medium; she interacts easily. Before she even approaches a crowd she creates an image of herself in the mirror. She is all soft curves, light skin and hair, brown eyes with beautiful long eyelashes, a Venus, the Empress in the Tarot deck. She puts on a top that looks like an impressionistic painting, low cut to accent her full, round breasts. She moves through a crowd with fluid movements, brush strokes on a canvas of self expression. Like any creator she has an idea of what she wants to experience, but who can know how things will unfold. She works the room, talking, laughing, brushing by people and taking photos of people she just that moment met, this is her natural habitat.


She loves art, she says. She also loves the artist. We artists are the high priestesses of the Tarot deck, the spiritual expression of our more earthy, feminine counterparts (the Empress). We hold the mysteries of the universe; its our jobs to see truth and beauty with depth and clarity. If the people in her bar scene are colorful, fluid brush strokes, the artist is a black circle, both empty and full, a mystery that can't easily be known, and my friend, she is the focal point of her own creation, a beauty and truth desiring to be seen.