I first sold my pots after graduating college, displayed on my Indian print bedspread in Yellow Spring, Ohio in 1972 (with my mom offering guidance on how to do it better).
From basement workspaces to a backyard light-filled studio, from retail craft fairs to selling directly to stores and then adding textiles…50 years seem to have flown by.
What’s next?
I will always love clay but am cutting back to do only custom work and special orders, while building my textile business.
Here is a wonderful poem by potter, and poet Jack Troy – a national treasure in the world of ceramics. I will never be in his league but I love the poem.
CONTAINMENT by Jack Troy
I have picked up, moved, shaped,
and lightened myself of many tons of clay,
and those tons lifted, moved, and shaped me,
delivering me to this living-space
I wake and move about in,
space perhaps equal to that I have opened and enclosed
in plate, cup, bowl, jug, jar.
I am thankful no one ever
led me to the pit I’d help to make in Earth,
or showed me all the clay at once.
I’m grateful no one ever said, “There.
That heap’s about a hundred fifty tons.
Go make yourself a life.
And oh, yes, here’s a drum of ink.
See what you can do with that.”
I wouldn’t have known where to begin.