tag:catherinewhite.com,2008-12-03:/rough-ideas//1 2010-02-10T17:26:31Z Movable Type Commercial 4.23-en tag:catherinewhite.com,2010:/rough-ideas//1.117 2010-02-10T16:27:04Z 2010-02-10T17:26:31Z

White clay seems like the appropriate palette for this time of year especially the winter of 2010. We had over 24 inches of snow last weekend and we are getting more as I type.I often think of winter as being...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com White clay seems like the appropriate palette for this time of year especially the winter of 2010. We had over 24 inches of snow last weekend and we are getting more as I type.

I often think of winter as being barren, the landscape stripped to the essential bones of structure, but with the recent snows the simplicity I find inspiring is the minimalism that happens through blanketing and softening.

I am always drawn to views composed only of hill and sky. When storms pull in and views are reduced to a limited palette of gray and white it reminds me of slip and clay.

There are moments when the landscape seems flattened like a drawing and then pops into more intricate and sculptural 3-dimensional forms.

The drifting snow has allowed my imagination to make new connections  and translations from the summer palette of stoneware and the woodfired kiln to porcelain in the gas fired kiln.

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Today is the shortest day of the year. The sun sets early and I'm posting this message before the light merges with night. I have numbered the short days with captured images to share new stories of the year."As black...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com Today is the shortest day of the year. The sun sets early and I'm posting this message before the light merges with night. I have numbered the short days with captured images to share new stories of the year.

"As black days came unnumbered, merging with night, the pulaar--visits between villagers---started up again. They told new stories about animal and human doings, about the demise of their traditional lifeways and melting ice caps, and waited in their cold heaven, for the coming of light."

--Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven, p. 356.

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The tiniest remains of the orange sunset linger and ignite the contrast of hill and sky. The indigo blue of the night snow is like a river of reflective surface. A week ago my friend Willi offered me a huge...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com The tiniest remains of the orange sunset linger and ignite the contrast of hill and sky. The indigo blue of the night snow is like a river of reflective surface. A week ago my friend Willi offered me a huge pomegranate for my photo and I told him I was trying to use objects from my or nearby gardens. Now that the ground is buried in snow drifts, I reach for the clementines on the counter to flavor my palette of images. I break my own rules, relying on an intuitive direction for this year's solstice series.

"Darkness reconciles all time and disparity. It is a kind of rapture in which life is no longer lived brokenly. In it we are seers with no eyes. The polar night is one-flavored, without past or future. It is the smooth medium of present time, of time beyond time, a river that flows between dreaming and waking."
--Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven, p. 47.

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Snow day! Eighteen inches and counting. As the light faded I went out in my long, red down coat, boots and waterproof pants as well as two ski poles. My steps were slow and deliberate, searching for firm footing before...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com Snow day! Eighteen inches and counting. As the light faded I went out in my long, red down coat, boots and waterproof pants as well as two ski poles. My steps were slow and deliberate, searching for firm footing before shifting weight. My dog bounded and hopped like some cartoon character sniffing with her nose buried in the snow. The piled powder shifted and exaggerated the shapes of buried pots and plants. The jar on the porch had a new interpretation of shoulder and neck. The transformation simplifies and elaborates the landscape. As daylight drained, the snow swirled in its own light.

"An hour after midday the light was gone and we drove on through the white darkness of the Polar night. The details of the landscape melted strangely one into the other like frozen fog, and little ice-covered hills looked like mountains."
--Rasmussen in 1921 quoted by Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven,  p. 46]]> tag:catherinewhite.com,2009:/rough-ideas//1.113 2009-12-19T02:29:36Z 2009-12-19T03:18:16Z

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com We got our Xmas tree, our daughter is home and we don't have to go anywhere. Arriving  home after dark we had a dinner of story telling and time on the couch. Can't ask for much more.

"Greenlanders say that only the Quanallit-- the white people--are afraid of the dark, while Eskimos like nothing better than long winter days of story telling and talking to spirits."
--Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven, p 38.

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"We met up with an old man, named Uutaaq, who invited us to his home. His father had gone to the North Pole with Robert Perry and he wanted to tell me the story....His wife lit the traditional candles on...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com "We met up with an old man, named Uutaaq, who invited us to his home. His father had gone to the North Pole with Robert Perry and he wanted to tell me the story....His wife lit the traditional candles on the coffee table before the stories began, as if their wavering light would summon the thread of the past into the room."
--Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven, pp. 235-236

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Endings faced me as my intro to wheel class met for the last time today at the Corcoran in Washington, DC. On the way home the day faded with a violet sunset over the far blue-ridge mountains, making elegant blue...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com Endings faced me as my intro to wheel class met for the last time today at the Corcoran in Washington, DC. On the way home the day faded with a violet sunset over the far blue-ridge mountains, making elegant blue purple lines in the distance. It was earlier than my usual pattern when I pulled off the highway, but It felt like the middle of the night.

"No matter what you did in winter, how deep you dove, there was still no daylight and no comprehension that came with light. Endings were everywhere, visible within the invisible, and the timeless days and nights ticked by."
--Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven,  p. 36

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Heading down to the studio in the dark I reached for a headlamp flashlight as my guide. When I stepped out onto the gravel and snapped it on I realized the battery was dying. The fading ray seemed like it...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com Heading down to the studio in the dark I reached for a headlamp flashlight as my guide. When I stepped out onto the gravel and snapped it on I realized the battery was dying. The fading ray seemed like it would barely illuminate the path. But the further I got from the lights of the house the headlamp was just enough to decipher grass from gravel and the difference of wet and dry. Every year as the days get short I have to re-learn the art of walking in the dark, a seasonal lesson about moving forward only once the eyes have adjusted to a new type of vision--just as a twist to normal sight is sometimes required to resurrect creative momentum.

"Tonight the darkness jolts me. I walk around the room trying to lift the dark cover of night with a flashlight in my hand, as if its fading beam were a shovel. I am trying to understand how one proceeds from blindness to seeing, from seeing to vision."
--Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven, p. 38
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Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com This morning the world looked as if it was a black and white photo. Fog, ice and general dampness shimmered in the air. I slowly walked to the pond on my way to the studio, studying  the great blue heron slowly flapping past, gliding above the frozen ice, wondering how it feels to be that long winged long legged bird.

On my way to an appointment, I heard an interview with the great great grandaughter of Charles Darwin, Ruth Padel. She has recently written his biography in verse. As she spoke of her family and Darwin she conveyed their deep love of nature imbued with a sense of sheer wonder. She quoted Darwin as saying, "if I'd have my life to live over again, I would make it a rule to read a poem a day."

Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

Ted Kooser
Published in "Flying at Night"
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Friday night after Thanksgiving we had a simple dinner at my father's loft. We began to exchange stories about his father's youngest sister. Dad and I traded stories back and forth till Warren reminded us there was a profile written...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com Friday night after Thanksgiving we had a simple dinner at my father's loft. We began to exchange stories about his father's youngest sister. Dad and I traded stories back and forth till Warren reminded us there was a profile written about her stashed with my mother's books. I went to the shelf and found the slim booklet.  Zoe began to read about the time that Frannie had slipped in the bathtub.  Zoe soon looked up laughing and told us that Dad and I each had told a different half of the same story. That evening, bathed in  candlelight, with stories, laughter and the last of the pumpkin pie, was the highlight of my visit home.

"We sit side by side on the porch swing, waiting to see what tale will be told next. We are learning the way in which stories end, how they drift into near silence, yet leave an after-ringing, like a bell."
--Ted Kooser, "Lights on a Ground of Darkness"
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After yoga I had coffee with my fellow yogi Tom Davenport. I am always a sucker for his stories of what Delaplane, Marshal and The Plains were like when he was a kid. We often talk about movies because among...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com After yoga I had coffee with my fellow yogi Tom Davenport. I am always a sucker for his stories of what Delaplane, Marshal and The Plains were like when he was a kid. We often talk about movies because among other things, he is a story teller, filmmaker and founder of Folkstreams where he posts films and short videos. For instance, his stories and films document and connect musicians, craftspeople and the history of the Delaplane church or street festivals in Brooklyn with specific images and sounds to ignite imagination. In the back of Tom's Subaru were a few turnips rolling around, complete with frozen greens and dirt from his garden that have resurfaced in today's image.

To keep people all alive a little longer, it just takes honesty to write a few pages in handwriting. That person will lift up into the light a little bit. 
--Ted Kooser talking about writing his new book Lights on a Ground of Darkness [from my notes listening to a radio interview].
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The day seems bracketed by the ground of darkness. A cold predawn walk for the newspaper began the path, and a post-sunset drive home from a neighbor's concludes with disappearing light. The space in-between seems like a short spurt of...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com The day seems bracketed by the ground of darkness. A cold predawn walk for the newspaper began the path, and a post-sunset drive home from a neighbor's concludes with disappearing light. The space in-between seems like a short spurt of energy and imagination.

"Our memories of a place, no matter how fond we were of it, are little more than a confusion of lights on a ground of darkness." --Edwin Muir ]]> tag:catherinewhite.com,2009:/rough-ideas//1.103 2009-12-10T23:22:17Z 2009-12-11T00:35:52Z

It seemed that any time my mother cleaned her desk she came across a collection of postcards. Newly discovered, they would inspire her to send to one of her four children, the odd exhibition invite or photo with her haiku-like...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com It seemed that any time my mother cleaned her desk she came across a collection of postcards. Newly discovered, they would inspire her to send to one of her four children, the odd exhibition invite or photo with her haiku-like message describing her travels in NYC or a recently attended public reading.

This afternoon I sorted packing materials, images, and pots and cleared off surfaces in the studio racing to take a photo before I lost the light. I came back to the house as if walking in my mother's footsteps, seeing through her eyes the spectacle of the sunset. The light drained and the trees stood in silhouette while I sat in my daughter's bedroom listening to an interview with the poet Ted Kooser.

"Were it not for the way you taught me to look at the world, to see the life in everything, I would have been lonely forever."
--Ted Kooser from his new book Lights on a ground of darkness from the poem,  to the memory of my mother.
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Last night I taught the final class for the semester at Hood College in Frederick, MD. I try to instill a sense in my students that drawing is valuable for clay artists. I want them to see with their fingers...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com Last night I taught the final class for the semester at Hood College in Frederick, MD. I try to instill a sense in my students that drawing is valuable for clay artists. I want them to see with their fingers and leave marks both in clay and paper as they define their path. I left Frederick just as it began to snow and the roads were immediately slippery. To drive last night, at first through the Maryland snow with no visibility, and later through the Virginia freezing rain, was to to drive with eyes in the tires of my car. I could only see as far as the beamed headlights reached; it was a great metaphor for the path of the artist. We make one choice at a time based on a small visible, yet slippery section of the road.

       "To fall
is to return,
        to fall is to rise.
To live is to have eyes in one's fingertips,"

Quoted from Octavio Paz at the end of A match to the heart
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When I was in my 20's I remember my mother told me that she brought me up with the idea that as the only girl with three brothers that I was as strong as they were. As we reminisced she...

Catherine White http://www.catherinewhite.com When I was in my 20's I remember my mother told me that she brought me up with the idea that as the only girl with three brothers that I was as strong as they were. As we reminisced she was recovering from a broken wrist. Her broken bone made her feel a new kind of fragility and had her rethinking the differences in strength between men and women. I try to walk without a limp and exercise and feel like a wimp as I pick my way carefully around dogs and slippery spots.

" 'You have always been so strong. Now it is time to learn about being weak.'... How could I grow strong by becoming weak, I asked. I was being purposefully naive. What he was asking for was balance."
-- as told to Gretel Ehrlich by Takashi, a farmer-monk from southern Japan [in a match to the heart].
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