500 Works of Art on the Road to Your Creativity: Part 5 – Vessels

Part 5 – Vessels

Explorations of forms and possibilities using slabs & hand-building. This was my apprenticeship with clay.

I played with wet slabs, leather hard slabs, and everything in between. I mixed types of clay, created my own glazes, and broke all the rules the teachers and textbooks taught…

It was here that I started studying the mistakes and how to make them, more than the rules and how to copy them, which lead to the discovery of the Japanese aesthetic I so cherish.

Over the next few weeks, you will find a selection from the dozens of experiments… And, no, I didn’t damage any kilns, cause any explosions, nor ruin any of my fellow student’s works. I did, however, get the approval of my teacher to do whatever I wanted and I even trained another teacher on how to motivate some of his new students with creative explorations.

This led to my being given the status of apprentice ceramist and a move to a private studio to work under the supervision of porcelain master.

ps: I’ve started the process of organizing all my articles on this feature into the book format. It’s very exciting, satisfying, and at times, overwhelming to write a book. If you like what you have been reading in this feature, Please Support The Book Project based on this feature: “The Creative Process” with a minimum donation of $1/month, I’ll send you a free e-book copy upon publication in 2018.