The Crossing Point: Selected Talks and Writings

XIV: Work and Source

XIV This talk was given on September 16, 1971, in Farmington, Michigan, at the invitation of Robert Piepenberg, for the Michigan Potters' Guild and Oakland Community College,where Piepenberg teaches and where the talk took place. In it for the first time I made an extensive showing of new work in clay and talked around it, letting this dialogue give the form of my presentation. And, more explicitly than in "Nine Easter Letters," I integrated into the talk a feeling for the Michaelmas festival which comes in late September. I drove to Detroit in order to bring nine cartons of work. Indeed this decision to witness to the importance of personal initiative in sharing our work and its meanings has informed the way I was to "lecture" during the following seasons. It fits with my taste for immediacy and "suchness": a relish for intrinsic worth, "that particular what." And for what Paulus Berensohn in his new book Finding One's Way with Clay calls an Aesthetic of Humanness. Some work may be self-evident: a mug, a bowl, a casserole, pitcher, platter, ceramic shoe or handbag, hanging planters, though these may have special secrets for their makers, to be shared. Other work, symbolic, sculptural, may offer a still more secret script. We are used, in the study of art and culture, to inquire into sources of imagery in order to attune ourselves and indeed in order to be able to "see" what is there. In Africa, a few bumps on a high rounded surface, like a spiritual Braille, may signify the presence of gods. Last spring (1972), a Conference of Women in the Visual Arts met at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C.How much anguish was expressed by women who felt frustrated by a lack of gallery recognition! I suggested that they might imagine, if they wished, other options : that we let our homes and studios be galleries informally; or take our work in person, a piece at a time if need be, into neighboring homes and community places, libraries hospitals schools. How free we are to be imaginative and to invent ways of sharing! I see myself as a kind of peddler, carrying sacred wares around the country, offering work in dialogue with people. I often include poemprints in addition to clay forms in these presentations. The talk as printed here has been taken mainly off a tape made on the evening it was given, and for that reason mingles improvisation with some written material I had prepared. I also showed slides of earlier work in clay. 219 Work and Source Y Aou may think when you look at the front of this room and see all the things I have brought with me that I have misunderstood the invitation and that I thought I was invited to come to give a show rather than to give a talk. I didn't misunderstand, but I felt very much the need to bring work this time and to let the work do part of the speaking. I'd like to begin as a kind of warm-up with a few poems inspired by clay and potters . The first one is the first poem I ever wrote about pottery, and I wrote it a long time ago when I first began to work seriously with clay at Black Mountain College with Karen Karnes and David Weinrib, in 1952. I was so astonished, so full of joy and amazement at the experience of clay and fire, of centering and forming and trimming the ware — and having been identified in my own thoughts up to that time pretty much with the verbal arts rather than the non-verbal arts, it was natural that my wonder would find its way into a poem. Myheart was overflowing, and I saw the truths of pottery everywhere. I call it "Homage to the Weinribs, Potters"; and still, though it is full of innocence and beginnings, I like it; I'd like to begin the evening with it. HOMAGE TO THE WEINRIBS, POTTERS: BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE Sun-up / over the valley'slip a runningglaze, lake, crazed and curdled. Sun-down / and the dense rim fires nut-black, bone-brown. Stoneware is thenight, its granite foot, aside, the hills, trimmed sills and shallows.Obene, bene, blessed be the jars that burn with day, turn smack center on the whirringdark. 220 This next poem I wrote...