Reflections on Working With Clay

I really love clay as a medium, partially because it is so tactile. You have to use your hands!

Displaying my pieces on the web only gives you part of their story. To understand their strengths and their weaknesses, a person has to hold them. I thought this was strange at first when my teacher would always wait to grade a piece until she had picked it up. However, now I understand that the weight of the piece told her something about the quality of it Lighter pieces are more difficult to make than heavier ones. She was also measuring the consistency of the wall thickness and feeling for places where the clay had uneven weight.

The dimension of weight also affects the feeling of the piece. Picking up "Baby Owl" for example, one might notice that it is about the same size and weight as a small baby. "Yappy Dog" is clearly an "overweight" piece and its heft coveys the feeling of an older dog who has led a comfortable life but can no longer chase the squirrels and he had done in his youth and now must be content to bark at them from a distance. "Thin-Walled Bowl" is very light weight and is impressive until you feel the sides and notice that they grow thicker towards the bottom - a reoccurring problem with many of my wheel thrown pieces that I need to continue to work on.

However, producing anything in clay requires patience. So much can go wrong in the process. Cracks can develop in the drying process. Glazing a piece can be a matter of luck but it has severe ramifications. A good glaze can save a poor piece, while a thinly applied glaze or a poor chemical reaction of a properly applied glaze can ruin the most promising work.

Since I am a beginner, my work can be sorted into the following percentages:
25% of it is really awful and can't be saved
50% of it is in a limbo state - neither good enough to keep, nor poor enough to throw out immediately
25% of it is appealing
As one develops skill with working with clay, I expect the percentage of appealing work to go up BUT what I have seen in reality is that one's standards simply become higher. Accomplished aspiring artists that I know can produce work that is appealing to me and my criteria quite consistently. However, they often express dissatisfaction because they are working towards higher goals.