My installation of pots "in the kitchen" at Cross MacKenzie Gallery was on view through February 2016.
As I read through old correspondence and look at my father's drawings and sculptures from throughout his life I remember that so much of my aesthetic was developed either in the kitchen as we prepared dinner or close by as we ate at the "dinning room" table. During meals we told stories, laughed, read aloud family correspondence, and argued. My dad finished every meal with a cup of black coffee.
My mother made a huge effort to use my earliest pots as well as everything else I subsequently brought home. The first pot I ever threw inhabited the table as the sugar jar. Over the years, as I have rethought my work, I continue to muse over past conversations about the perfect cup or dinner plate.
The pieces shown here have been reduction cooled in our gas kiln. It has been exciting to shift my palette and see my materials with fresh eyes.
February 29
An extra day--
Like the painting's fifth cow,
who looks out directly,
straight toward you,
from inside her black and white spots.
An extra day--
Accidental, surely:
the made calendar stumbling over the real
as a drunk trips over a threshold
too low to see.
An extra day--
With a second cup of black coffee.
A friendly but businesslike phone call.
A mailed-back package.
Some extra work, but not too much--
just one day's worth, exactly.
An extra day--
Not unlike the space
between a door and its frame
when one room is lit and another is not,
and one changes into the other
as a woman exchanges a scarf.
An extra day--
Extraordinarily like any other.
And still
there is some generosity to it,
like a letter re-readable after its writer has died.
--Jane Hirshfield, from The Beauty
As I read through old correspondence and look at my father's drawings and sculptures from throughout his life I remember that so much of my aesthetic was developed either in the kitchen as we prepared dinner or close by as we ate at the "dinning room" table. During meals we told stories, laughed, read aloud family correspondence, and argued. My dad finished every meal with a cup of black coffee.My mother made a huge effort to use my earliest pots as well as everything else I subsequently brought home. The first pot I ever threw inhabited the table as the sugar jar. Over the years, as I have rethought my work, I continue to muse over past conversations about the perfect cup or dinner plate.The pieces shown here have been reduction cooled in our gas kiln. It has been exciting to shift my palette and see my materials with fresh eyes.February 29An extra day--
Like the painting's fifth cow,
who looks out directly,
straight toward you,
from inside her black and white spots.
An extra day--
Accidental, surely:
the made calendar stumbling over the real
as a drunk trips over a threshold
too low to see.
An extra day--
With a second cup of black coffee.
A friendly but businesslike phone call.
A mailed-back package.
Some extra work, but not too much--
just one day's worth, exactly.
An extra day--
Not unlike the space
between a door and its frame
when one room is lit and another is not,
and one changes into the other
as a woman exchanges a scarf.
An extra day--
Extraordinarily like any other.
And still
there is some generosity to it,
like a letter re-readable after its writer has died.
--Jane Hirshfield, from The Beauty
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