The kiln loading continued today. To be aesthetically effective requires a mix ranging from large sculptural vases to petite espresso cups. The resonance of each piece is different. Some are new and intriguing making me totally invested in seeing them fired to fruition. Other work has receded in immediacy so there is actually more freedom in the range of potential resolutions.
FOR WHAT BINDS US
There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they’ve been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.
And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There’s a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,
as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest-
And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.
–Jane Hirshfield, in Of Gravity & Angels, Wesleyan University Press, 1988