#(this is why i don't really consider most photography art. Like.. the process is neat; but thats it.)

[waffliesinyoface]

i cannot stress enough how important it is to participate in The Act of Making Shit

im taking a ceramics class right now, and have made several creations of varying quality. the VERY FIRST projects i made were "pinch pots", which is exactly what it sounds like, ie: taking a ball of clay and shaping it into a bowl/cup with your hands

i'll be honest, the stuff i made is extremely lumpy and ugly and just Bad.

this looks like an ash tray made by an 8 year old in art class. I was attempting to make a bowl for cereal.

its hideous, and i love it.

I kinda embraced the lumpy misshapen look for this after fucking up several times and needing to start over, so i used red and black and scratched little fire designs on the outside to try and emulate the idea of it being literally sculpted out of a still cooling hunk of igneous rock. (If you're familiar with Runescape, it was based on the TzHaar)

Fun fact about using multiple layers of slip and underglaze! When you cover everything in a clear glaze afterwards, some of those under layers kinda bubble up during the kiln firing process, and instead of something smooth, you get a rough, pitted texture. Ordinarily, this would be considered a flaw which you might want to fix - someone else had something similar happen and decided to refire it to try and smooth it out a bit. But like. I was going for rough lumpy stone, so the weird texture on the outside just enhanced it.

Is this bowl "good art"? Nope! But you know what? I still like it. I can pick it up and marvel at it. It exists because I said so. The process of firing clay into ceramic changes it on a molecular level. Water cannot exist in it. Even if it was broken and ground into dust, it will exist as ceramic for ten thousand years.

This little bowl that I use to eat chips out of was once mud, and isn't that just amazing?