Searching for Beauty

I have often stated that I have a passionate affection for pottery.  It is indeed in the very title of this series of blogs.  I must confess, and I know my wife, Judy, will be relieved, that I have never felt real passion for a potter.  I know this will disappoint, if not devastate some of my potter friends.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am really very, very fond of a number of potters I have known for many years.  It is a special delight to realize that beautiful pots often come from the same kind of person.  I would like to feel that it would be unlikely that a truly beautiful ceramic object could come from a truly unlikable person but I might be a bit naive if I made that declaration.  How do potters get along with other potters?  Is there a natural rivalry and competition for my attention?  Again I will remain within the romance of my illusions, not wanting to know those things that could disillusion me in this regard.  Maybe it is a good thing that I don’t take the potter home with the pot.  With all that energy it takes to make pots, they probably eat a bit more than the average person and they might find out where I hide my scotch

In my 30^th letter from my book, “Searching for Beauty: Letters From a Collector to a Studio Potter”, I discuss my relationship to pot and potter,

“Christa, do I communicate with the potter when I gaze onto the pot?   After the point of purchase, the potter does not go home with the pot.  Yet I do interact with the author of the text.  I question the implied assertion, accept and slide inside the style, hoping to catch the rhythm and mannerisms of language and metaphor.  I accompany the author’s journey and surface her argument, seeking knowledge and wisdom for my own purposes.  I never surrender my independence, but provide a leap of faith that must eventually be  rewarded.   To answer my earlier question, I do think I engage the potter as vigorously as the author of the written text;  seek to discover the creator’s intention, to locate those imaginative deviations that mark originality, to place the object in context.   The potter, fresh in the miraculous creation of the pot, might immediately claim a unique status for that object unmatched in previous ceramic history.  As collector and perceiver, I  must  humble the pot by placement in a communal context that attaches that object to my world.  The company of other pottery in my collection does not represent a hierarchy, but does teach that no individual pot or potter has a monopoly on creativity or aesthetic accomplishment.  

What is the difference in my relationship to pot and potter?  As a friend, you are always welcome in my home.  I would even extend that invitation to all the potters represented in my collection.  As host, I would try to provide my potter friends with food, drink and exposure to my beloved collection, home and garden.  Your pot, in contrast, would join my family.  I  would take responsibility for the care and safety of that object.   Accepted and housed, the pottery cannot cause me pain or disappointment.  People are more volatile and uncertain in their possible behavior.  This does not diminish the value and need of love and respect for family and friends.  The risk is greater.  As a teacher, my rewards were in the engagement with students.  Whatever the differing degrees of anxiety,  I still seek out and enjoy friends and family, the pot and potter.  The creation and appreciation of pottery is a manifestation of the complexity and virtue of human beings and human culture.   These gifts of the human hand encourage my contact and appreciation of people.  I do not have to make a choice.  Revealed insecurities do not embarrass me.  I consider myself self-sufficient,  social interaction does not come from concerns about individual isolation.  Reading and art do not require the company of others.    The sources of my life preferences and habits can be traced to the origins of my existence.  A virtue becomes operational when it successfully compensates for the more obvious  inadequacy.   It is the inadequacies that give me humanity, it is the virtues that give me grace.  Whatever virtuous habits I do possess, including the love of reading and pottery, they reflect both the joys and pain of a long life.   I have no reason for complaint.”

I must admit I do so enjoy reading what I have written in the past.  I am especially impressed if the portion I re-read  was  published as text on a printed page from a book with my name on it.  Is there an author who would not admit what I have just confessed?  Yes, yes, I do occassionaly re-read a passage I have written from my book and am a bit embarrassed and wish I could do it over.  Is it similar to how a potter feels about their own work?  Surely there must be a surge of pride when you walk into a gallery and see you work on exhibit?  Can ceramic artists gaze on their own work and not admire it?  I fully understand the high demands and standards artists or writers make of themselves, never fully satisfied and always seeking to improve.  I too feel that when I write and will indeed often go back and revise and try to improve a sentence or paragraph.  Sometimes it’s a single word I change, sometime a complete sentence, sometimes I simply delete a paragraph and start over.  As a collector I am constantly moving my pottery around, always seeking to improve the arrangement of ceramic objects.  Sometimes after moving a single object from one shelf to another, or even just turning it around to the side formerly facing the wall, I marvel at what a difference it makes and wonder why I didn’t do it years ago.

In the quote above, I try to explore the idea that I place a single pot in the company of other pots in my home that are initially strangers to that pot.  Do potter’s like that idea?  That a collector sticks their pot alongside pots from many different potters?  Could your pot get lost on that shelf with twenty or more other pots of mine?  In a gallery like I have with several hundred other pots all around it?  Have you ever been to a collector’s house and seen a pot of yours and your heart sank because you believe it was in the wrong space and with associated in close placement with the wrong pots?  I feel that all my pots are equally presented and displayed.  I honestly don’t play favorites but rather enjoy all my pots.  Admittedly I will sometimes spend a bit more time with a few pots for a day or two, enjoying the discovery of features that I had not fully perceived before in those particular objects.  But if a parent would never confess a favorite among their children, surely you would not expect that kind of confession from me.  Some pots seem to attract attention because of their size or rather spectacular shape or glaze.  Sometimes I am in the mood to fully appreciate that bravado display but there are other times that the subtle variations of a smaller or more refined pot brings other kinds of aesthetic rewards.  No, I don’t play favorites and that is the end of that.

I like the idea of placing pots in close proximity that are very different in character and type.  For instance, maybe an antique pot that displays a highly disciplined and traditional character sits next to a contemporary pot with maybe a more outlandish attitude;  a pot from an indigenous potter showing its local or regional distinction sits next to a highly sophisticated pot no doubt from a potter with at least an MFA from Alfred or some other distinguished institution.  I also place ceramic animals from various sources among my pots, plates, cups and other kinds of vessels.  I mix them all up, wanting to feature a central claim that I have always made as a collector –  that human creativity and genius is not limited to one group or nation or culture – but is inherent and embedded in all groups, nations and cultures.  It is this amazing diversity and infinite variety in the ways that diverse personalties and groups express themselves that proves the glory of the hand-created ceramic artifact and comprises convincing evidence of the rich achievements of human culture.  I must also claim that all my ceramic objects eventually become friends with each other, relate to each other by their shared space, and compliment each other by their very differences, all coexisting and cooperating in my domestic community of ceramic objects.

I discuss this very idea in this except from my 41^st letter from my book,

“This process of haphazard appropriation is essential for my temperament.  It was not by accident that my MA thesis was on collage, the collection of disparate and discarded elements at one place on a two dimensional surface.  The meaning comes later, after the relationships among the newly situated elements become more obvious.  Placement and context invite improbable and novel relationships and alliances.  It is difficult to be self-conscious and knowledgeable about the patterns of placement of ideas  within my own  active mentality.  Multiple influences impact me, yet are filtered through a resistant and stubborn persona that eventually takes credit for any summary or results.  It is difficult to calibrate or assess their consequence in my behavior.  Yet there is a continuity to my attitude toward a number of things.  The placement of my pottery within my collection is overt and visible.  I do create a visual and physical collage with my pottery, an original composition that occupies each room and all the items within that room.”

Can  collectors claim a moral imperative in what they do?  After all, isn’t collecting the very essence of a selfish act?  I buy art and craft and it becomes my personal property and I take it home where I lock the doors of my home every night before I go to bed.  My home is my private space, not a public one.  All those artifacts, over 1,200 of them, are reserved for me, my family and invited friends to enjoy.  How can I weave a convincing story that changes this reality to a noble one?  In this next and last excerpt from my book, taken from my 44^th letter, I talk about stewardship and what it means to me.  I am totally sincere about this role and responsibility and will continue to argue that the protection and preservation of our cultural legacies is as important as the protection and preservation of our environment.  At a time in our society when there is a profound gulf between the pursuit of individual private profit and the collective attainment of civic welfare, this might be a difficult argument to make credible.

“Stewardship is another concept from the environmental literature that has great meaning  for this collector.   I care about things -I care for things – a grove of oak trees, the pottery in every room of my house.  Stewardship is always brief – a lifetime or less, an essentially transient obligation that must be ultimately transferred to others.    What we seek to cherish and maintain is under constant threat and carries a finite term of  existence due to  the mortal limitations of nature or the incidental  accidents of history.  We seek to lengthen and prolong that existence, believing in their sacred and  irreplaceable properties.  Nature has inherent recovery systems and can renew itself if our abuse of nature can be discouraged and finally denied.  Our cultural traditions and treasures are more fragile.  Our devotion demands  heroic resistance to those forces that would threaten the endangered subjects under our care.  Here the collector can claim a moral function, similar to those who seek to protect the natural environment.   It springs from an altruistic dedication that transcend self and self profit,  inspired by a transcendent love for the highest attainments of the species, of human civilization.”

I plan to continue this discussion at least in the next few blogs.  Summers are interior months for me.  Perhaps an hour or two early in the morning in my garden, then a hasty retreat to my air-conditioned house.  I read an article or two about global warming in one of my journals while on my exercise bike this morning.  Summer is not a good time for me to read articles on global warming.  I reach out to a few vases for reassurance and they are still cool to the touch.  It seems we are living at a time right now when systems are breaking down –  natural, cultural and economic systems.  Collectors needs stability as much as investors do.   The maintenance of various systems are now global and require intimate cooperation because we have somehow all become interdependent.

Maybe it’s the hot weather impacting my morale but right now I huddle with Judy and my pots within the refuge of our home, uncertain in a world that seems to be growing ever more uncertain around me.  I cannot compare my time to the turmoil and tragedy of Edmund de Waal’s family as discussed in Part 2 blog in this series.  That story took place in the context of the previous century.  The tides of history do not always predict an easy time or guarantee everyone a happy ending.  De Waal’s book did demonstrate one thing, collections have their own unique history.   This history includes the succession of people who care for them.  In contrast to his story of the Japanese netsuke, my pottery collection is still young in its rather brief history and certainly younger than this old collector and blog writer who finds so much joy in taking care of them.