Category: environment

My Pots are so much about surface decoration.

I believe in having a very strong, aesthetically pleasing form to put those decorations on but I find myself looking forward to making the images more than the pots these days.

So the question is, what to put on the pots?

I love nature. I grew up on a farm, in the countryside. I wandered the woods and ravines most of my life, often alone.

I read somewhere (and I must find it) that a shared element in the lives of creative people (famous ones) they spent time in nature alone.  One must feel the power and the beauty of nature.

I find there is something soothing and comforting about realizing one is just a speck in the wilderness.

Here, going to the lake renews me, refreshes my sense of being on the planet.

 

I also love animals.  LOVE them. I was the kid who rescued the baby robin and fed it worms all day every day until it flew away. I was the one, up in the middle of the night with a doll baby bottle, feeding kittens who had lost their mother. I was the one with the boa constrictor in her dorm room in college.

So the things that appeal to me for surface decoration is what little nature and animals I see around me in the urban environment in which I find myself.

Since the dawn of “modern” humanity, artists have represented what they saw around them. From cave painters 40,000 years ago to the more recent petroglyphs of Africa, Australia and the American southwest to the prints of the Inuit Eskimos, to much folk art, we see represented, the animals they lived with on an intimate and daily basis.

Those animals symbolized things to them- we’re not quite sure what- but we can guess that their livelihood depended on some and many had magical or spiritual meaning.

Since I find renewal from nature, I would have to say the animals I see now remind me of natural environments, of living in the moment, of survival.

And they are simply lovely in and of themselves. I find beauty in their lines. I like the curves and forms and textures of animals. (As I do of branches.)

 

 

I have deep affection for our little urban neighbors; those who have figured out that we’re no longer hunting them. The biggest danger to them are our cars. Birds, rabbits, rodents, squirrels, raccoons, opossum, deer and the occasional coyote or cougar venture into our urban spaces. They live in our yards, parks and alleys.

I just bought a book for its title; Field Guide to Urban Wildlife (okay that’s maybe not the exact title- I can’t find it!)  I did find another book I also bought for the title; it is called

“Flattened Fauna; a Field Guide to Common Animals of Roads, Streets, and Highways” (by Roger Knutson) which is almost the same.

But I digress.

 

I want to remind people we still depend on nature, on the earth for our livelihood; we still have to share the planet with animals, we are still earthbound. I also think we are terribly lonely as a species.