New Work

How about some new work?

These are two of the eighteen or nineteen pieces that came out of the kiln on Sunday evening.

This is a large, shallow bowl, perhaps 14 inches in diameter. She's got a handful of glazes painted on, perhaps thirteen different glazes. (Maybe fourteen. I don't remember.) This is very much in the style that I like to work in. One change I made was to glaze the background. I don't usually do that, but I like the way it came out here.

This next piece is my pterodactyl platter, again about 14 inches across.


These are a strange departure for me. I asked The Brain for more complexity and this is what I got. And it is pretty complex. It's just that I still feel like something is lacking. Don't get me wrong, I like this plate. I like it a lot. There are just some slight tweaks I'd make if I had to do it all over again. (I'd make it less easy to discern an orientation to the plate. I'd worry less about obscuring the initial elements. And I'd probably--no, definitely--add another pterodactyl to it.)

Not that any of that is exactly what's missing. What's missing is what I'm still trying to get at, some of the cohesive elements of my incoherent childhood memories. Forgotten things. Forgotten important things. The disorganized nature of memories as a thing governed by themselves--completely unlike the organized nature of memories that we govern.

Am I making the least bit of sense?

I hope not.