the dirt

I always get the question, “How long did it take to make that?” and it’s a fair question, with a complicated answer…

The other day, I started building intuitively, meaning that I really didn’t know what I was doing or where I was going with this idea but I kept building anyway. I tried to document the process as I went, taking time to step back and look at what I was working on. This went on for about half a day, then I let this piece sit in my studio and we stared at each other over the course of the next few days after which I promptly threw it in the recycle bin.

For me, this is all a part of the process of creating. The ability to let go so that you can refine it in your head and in it’s physical form is crucial to this process. I don’t think of this piece as being gone forever, I think of it as not being ready to be out in the world yet. I also know that there are parts of this form that are very familiar to me and parts that are new, it takes time for these ideas to come together. I like to ask myself questions about the content of my work, “Why am I making this?”, “What did I see that inspired it?” and “Are there other ways to express this concept?”.  All these questions need to have at least some start of answer to them if I’m going to continue investing time into making the work and if I don’t have those answers yet, that’s ok. These questions and these forms don’t go away, they hibernate until they are shaped into something I can verbalize, at least to myself. It may be another decade before this comes to fruition but that’s ok too.

So when you buy a piece of art from an artist and you ask “How long did it take to make that?” remember that you are asking about the hours of experimentation, the hours of failures and the hours of refining that went into the process until the artist was able to make the piece that you are holding.

Even in the middle of these crazy winter storms we’ve been having, I try to get out into nature everyday. My dog Indy is my partner in crime for these adventures which can consist of an easy stroll along west cliff drive to long hikes into the redwoods or a road trip up the coast in search of empty beaches and washed up treasures. I usually share photos from these explorations on my Instagram feed (click the link to follow along) but thought I’d share a few here too.

The textures, colors, structures and compositions I try to capture these photos all follow me back into the studio and manifest themselves in some way into my clay forms. It can seem like a guilty pleasure to take a few hours each day for exploring and wandering when I could be in the studio building but I truly believe that without exploration there would be no inspiration.