clay: commissioned pots

I never understood how some potters would refuse to do commissions, but now I get it. It’s pressure, and you want your art practice to be joyful and feel spontaneous even if you have a vision for what you want the clay to turn into. My neighbor, Cecilia bought a few of my planters already filled with soil and succulents, and then asked me to make a pot for a money plant. I rolled a slab for my sixth plate and then managed to roll out two more slabs for this small pot.                             

I could not on that afternoon make this pot bigger. Time was the constraint as my plate had to come first. And so next week I’ll devote what’s left of this obsidian clay to a bigger planter. To utilize my time in the ceramics studio most efficiently, I have to go in with an explicit plan: what pot is going to be constructed today? And so I need to figure out next week’s planter to accommodate a 9” tall plant with foliage that has a breadth of 4-6” wide. And so yeah I need to make a bigger pot.