Listening to Stefan Andersson on the Potters Cast I realised certain things about my work. I want my pottery work to evoke an emotion, to make people thing about the object and perhaps change their ideas. I am ruled by my emotions but feel uncomfortable sharing them professionally, despite that being what the pots need sometimes.
“boredom haunts me as I work, I fear it will destroy me. I want to be better than my fears” -a note in my sketchbook. Not all old ideas and thoughts are comfortable. Putting them out into the world makes me feel uncertain like I am giving away too much. As for the date if this particular quote it is between January and December 2014. Finding this quote reminds me that I haven’t been happy with my work for some time. I am at the uncomfortable stage of being a maker where I am very aware of how bad I…
A video posted by Joseph Travis (@redfoxpottery) on Aug 16, 2015 at 4:51am PDT Recently I keep trying to write about the work of Ayumi Horie, James Gurney, Austin Kleon and so on. But every piece I write becomes torrid and dry, or it becomes a gushing piece “they are amazing”, “aren’t they creative” or “aren’t they really driving their work on”. I once wrote a piece about how annoyed I was about a particular ceramics writer always started a piece of writing about where he had come across the makers work; it became 100% about him rather than about…
Watching Alex Shimwell throw on YouTube always reminds me of watching Kevin Millward. Kevin Millward was a visiting tutor during my final year of my Undergraduate degree, he only taught at the university one day a week for four weeks. By this point I had been watching YouTube videos for a year to help with my throwing and I was truly awful. Not only did I not know what I was doing, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had drawings of what I wanted to make which were far beyond my making abilities, so I just…
I am fascinated by numbers at 16 years old I used to say I loved working with numbers, but that was before I did double maths for my A-Levels. I was good at working with numbers, more so than reciting facts verbatim, in fact before I got my ceramics degree my only qualifications were mathematics and sciences. Sometimes I think like about the cost of making something, as the cost of often selling something is higher, due to other factors and the fact I don’t sell means working out that final cost doesn’t bother me. The following is a thought…
