A few things I’ve heard, read, said, and been given…

Notice on my studio wall:
“The only things that’ll change your life are the books you read and the people you meet.”
Anon.

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This, a message from my friend Johanna Marquis, who said these words “made her think of just what it is that we are doing here”:

“When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgement of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself. And I think the world tends to forget that this is the ultimate significance of the body of work each artist produces. That work is not an expression of the desire for praise or recognition, or prizes, but the deepest manifestation of your gratitude for the gift of life.“
Stanley Kunitz, “The Wild Braid – A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden”

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It hasn’t been fashionable for a long time in the world of ceramics to be involved in materials, process, and skill, but think on this: Brankstone who was associated with a very early exhibition of Chinese Porcelain at the Burlington Institute in London, quoted the Chinese patron saint of potters (as translated by the 17th century Jesuit priest Pierre de Entrocolle):

“He penetrated deep among the slumbering rocks and learnt their histories. He became intimate with cosmic affairs and the divine process of decay and rebirth. He took his fragments of hillside and pounded them into loaves of plastic clay. With precision he learned to blow upon the flames and transmuted his fragments of hillside into bowls for the delight and use of man.”
Chinese patron saint of potters

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