Moving Forward

Here we are, at the end of the semester - I can hardly believe it's actually here! In looking back over the work I've done in this class, there are a few things that stand out to me; I thought, in way of closing, I'd mention them here.

First of all, it's hard to tell when you're inexperienced and optimistic exactly how much work something is going to be! All of these projects surprised me with intricacies and questions I hadn't foreseen. In a way, that made each one more meaningful and even more fun than I had really expected coming into the class. Even though few of them turned out especially pretty or even useful, I find I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish nonetheless.

The second thing I find interesting as I read through my posts one more time is just how much was contributed by others. Even though I often felt a little out of place, struggling with my misshapen coiled pots while awesome artists around me brought dragons and bowls and mugs to life with the very same clay I was using, I definitely did not make my projects what they are alone. From Kay's help with whistles (and pretty much everything else as well!) to my coworker pointing me in the direction of new cool discoveries to consider, people have been contributing to these projects all along. Of course, that's how it should be - somehow in originally envisioning this semester's work, though, I had forgotten about that integral part of learning.

Lastly and perhaps most importantly, to me at least, everything I encountered this semester gave me proof. Proof of something that maybe I had suspected before, but not yet seen in action: proof that the outcome of the project does not have to be perfect in order to inspire thought and create connections. Nothing I worked on was an exact replica or a precisely accurate procedure, and yet still everything served its original purpose - to expand my frame of mind and give me grounds on which I could approach ancient artifacts and people with even just a little bit more understanding and admiration - exquisitely.That's a lesson I will definitely take forward with me as I begin focusing my education on archaeology and communicating archaeology to the public, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to have learned it.

The Process of Color

I have to begin this post with a little bit of celebration: everything survived firing!!

I continue this post with a lot of indecision. The range of colors and coloring techniques available to me when I sat down to glaze my pieces managed to slow my progress considerably, as I struggled to evaluate each choice.

Color in history actually came up last week at work, in a conversation with some volunteers about the use of color on sarcophagi and portraits in the Mummies of the World travelling exhibit. Our conversation was mostly about the limitations that artists thousands of years ago faced, the scarcity of some colors over others, the resulting style choices; but I must admit that whenever I walk through that exhibit, what strikes me most is not which colors are absent, but all the colors that are still present after all sorts of time and, in some cases, abuse. Color, as I demonstrated perfectly in my anxious indecision today, is most definitely a part of the high standards and capacity for representation and meaning in art. Color, like building technique, can be a clue to the thoughts and perceptions of the artist.

But another interesting thing about color is that it can be highly personal, as my choices were today (especially given that I did not have the color templates or sources to match those that went along with the originals my projects were modeled after), or it can be culturally mandated - by fashion, by religion, by power, etc. Examples of both personal and cultural color are common, in ancient pieces as well as in pieces today. To me, this is an interesting distinction to consider as we investigate and try to understand ancient art - are we connecting with, or evaluating, or admiring, the culture as a whole or the individual artist? Though there is a significant difference between the two, I believe both definitely have worth.

Something from the Other Side of the World

New Discovery - "Church Model"

The above article was sent to me by one of my coworkers, who somehow figured out that I'm kind of into that sort of thing ;~) At first I read through it, was suitably impressed, and went on with my day. But I never did quite shake that image of the little hollow building, all ready to be lit up - and when I had extra time today after getting the rest of my whistles ready to go, I found the decision had already been made. 

In the interest of time, I used the pottery studio's roller to flatten myself some clay; without knowledge of the specific tools used to make the little church model, I was more interested in actually forming the building and the windows than the particulars of setting up the project. Along the same line, I decided early on that my building, while built after the model of the newly discovered church model, would not necessarily be a church. This goes back to my thoughts about representation in pottery: obviously, the church meant a lot to whoever made the original model, and that meaning spurred them to take the time to tackle such a project and imbue it with such delicate detail. I chose to honor that personal meaning rather than the actual object itself, and made my little lantern house with a more nature-oriented theme, as that's what holds similar meaning for me. 

To be honest, I'm glad I did, because - as with all my projects so far - making the little house turned out to be more difficult than expected. Getting reasonably straight and steady walls presented an interesting challenge, but even more so did the decorations in the windows. That said, this project held an element of satisfaction that my other projects have only danced around, stemming precisely from the idea of representation. Its utilitarian purpose (to give light) added to rather than detracted from its personal purpose. I actually found myself surprised that this sort of project is not more common today in hand-building classes. We still tend to think (I say "still" because this thinking has been in place since the beginning of the nineteenth century and earlier) of civilization and technology developing in a linear fashion, each thing better than the next, each thing helping the struggle for one particular goal. While that sort of thinking has its benefits, it leaves little place or understanding for excellent, inspiring projects from the past - like the Peruvian whistling vessels, or the church model - that stand out in terms of skill and meaning, but don't serve to advance anything in particular. To me, that seems like quite a pity.

I chose to go with stars and a forested roof - constellations, I'm afraid, were a bit beyond me this time around, especially as I didn't have time to address the holes in the roof of the original. Definitely still have some things to learn about constructing these models! I'm curious about the window decorations: it would have taken quite a fine tool to cut them out of the clay, if that's how they were done (I used a needle, which was effective, but it did tend to warp the walls of the house a bit). For my side windows, I tried cutting out a hole and then adding clay back in to make a window-pane effect, and that also worked, though I imagine the addition is pretty obvious on the inside of the house - I couldn't quite reach in well enough to smooth it over on that side. The holes cut in the original do not seem to adhere to strict lines, so it seems that perhaps the idea was more important than the execution? -Of course it could also be a product of what tools were used!

Old and New

Today my whistling vessel finally came together!!!

"Came together" there is a very accurate operative phrase. Welding my chosen whistle body, the by-now-dried main chamber, and a clay headpiece and handle together took some patience. I imagine most original potters (and most potters in general) did their work in one go as much as possible, but my schedule and the learning process here complicated things for me a little bit. It took a fair amount of coaxing to get the old dried clay to join properly with newer, wetter clay - in the end, though, I think I had success. Next, we'll see if it survives firing!

I have to admit, I'm pretty tempted to take this opportunity to go into an extended metaphor about melding current culture with the past, reshaping and recovering what we know and feel about ancient civilizations until they become more amenable to assimilation in the present. Something along that line definitely occurred to me often as I worked on my vessel today - though that could be blamed on the fact that I've been over my head in research and writing for my history-of-archaeology-in-popular-culture thesis for what feels like forever now. Suffice it to say that it seems to me that often, the things that we perceive as unyielding and unchangeable - dried, solid clay, for example - end up actually quite malleable, changing here and there until they can be brought into the next stage of development required of them.

See- you can hardly tell where the seams are! :~) That hollow handle was awfully tricky, though. I tried to do it by wrapping a flat rectangle of clay into a tube, but given the bend in the handle this quickly became complicated. I kept thinking of using a mold, but the question of how to remove the mold without disturbing the clay perplexed me. Perhaps molding it then letting it dry - or just using slightly drier clay - would have helped? Mine was quite soft - as a result, now it'll need some sanding to help with those lumps . . .

Tinkering

As promised, today I sat down and really focused on getting those whistles to work. It's hard to imagine such small objects taking so long to form and complete, but as it turns out there is a seemingly infinite array of minute adjustments and combinations of adjustments that can be made to get a whistle to work - or slip farther and farther from making a clear sound, as was the case with one or two of my little would-be instruments.

And what precisely was it, that needed to be done? Well, all of my whistles needed sharper edges for the air to flow over. When I had originally made the whistles, I had chosen to use just my hands, thinking "Of course the ancient Peruvians didn't have popsicle sticks!" This was silly of me, though, because I quickly realized that in order to get the straight edges and well-formed holes that make a whistle work, they probably did use some sort of tool. I'm not sure what that was, but something popsicle stick-like definitely has its appeal. I ended up using one of the needles common in the pottery studio, as well as a wooden scraping stick. Funny how we identify tools - seems to me we're only really likely to understand something as a tool if we've had occasion to use it or something very like it before.

One two of my whistles I chose to attach mouth pieces, though they all eventually worked - or sort-of worked - without them. The mouthpieces definitely complicated things; with those, I had to worry about how big all the openings were, how clear the air passageway was, where it was aiming, etc. Two turned out to be more than enough to occupy my time! Most of the whistle-building sites (see below) suggest making the mouth piece and whistle at once, which definitely makes sense. However, I had no way of knowing at the beginning which whistle (or how many) I'd want for my whistling vessel(s). By now, though, things are definitely starting to take shape!

How to Make a Ceramic Whistle

This was a whistle I made by splicing together two halves of a sphere. You can see the dividing line pretty clearly! However, this did not seem to affect the sound coming out of the whistle.

For this whistle, I tried to avoid the halves approach by molding the body around my thumb a bit and pulling it closed after. While the inside is smoother on the whole, it does have that ugly notch on it, and the sides are pretty irregular. Personally, I'd favor the other approach.

A top-down view of one of my whistle+mouth piece creations . . . The result of a lot of small adjustments!

Well, I Guess That Was a Good Thing . . .

I came in today to two important things - one a surprise, and one not. I had rather suspected as I left last time that the bottom of the vessel I'd been working on would be difficult to continue work on today, and to be honest I had almost expected to find that, in drying, the clay had collapsed in some areas, rendering the start a good learning exercise but definitely not a final product. More relieved that disappointed, I sat down to make another vessel body, this time intent on finishing the main chamber instead of leaving it open.

As I worked, the real surprise came: Kay gave me a folderful of information about making clay whistles, complete with troubleshooting info. (Maybe my endless and mostly futile attempts to produce sound last week had been louder - or more annoying - than I had thought? ;~D Haha, probably not, but the information definitely came at a good time.) This was an excellent help to me, and something that hadn't particularly occurred to me to look for in my research, silly as that sounds. After all, whistle technology probably hasn't changed much over years and cultures (though if it has that'd be very interesting). And I doubt that pottery was ever necessarily an entirely individual process, given the widespread use of common cultural patterns and forms.

All told, I ended the day well with a respectable vessel, coiled up to a rounded top with two openings. The coiling was an assumption on my part, and also a reflection of my limitations - I really wasn't sure how else it'd be made, and couldn't find such a thing mentioned in any of my books. I guess it's another one of those questions that comes up during "experimenting" that didn't seem so important before, yet reveals how much we see past products and processes through the lens of what we know in the present. In any case, I am now armed with new information and ready to make some working whistles the next time around.

Craftsmanship

I spent most of my time in the pottery studio today in complete wonder - at times bordering on desperate bewilderment - at the things that humanity has discovered the ability to make. More importantly, the process of turning that one-time possibility into a consistent skill impressed me.

Because, if there's one thing I can be pretty sure of after today, it's that even just making whistles (let alone whistling vessels) took a lot of tinkering for the first groups of people. And I wonder how they got the idea to begin, because it seems to me that hollow spheres with holes just so and air ducts perfectly cleared weren't really being made for many other purposes, which makes it difficult to believe the idea of a whistle arose by mistake. Perhaps experience with certain shells prompted the idea? Of course, I'm merely speculating, and a bit wildly at that; but I wish I could know what precisely was going through the minds of the first people to make these awesome vessels. That process of innovation is so human, and yet so often inscrutable in hindsight.

I may have mentioned this with the Jomon pots, but the amount of effort and perfectionism that must have gone into some of these ancient creations is crazy. I began trying to make the body of my whistling vessel today, seeing what it would be like to coil it, but also trying to make it as presentable as possible . . . And it was tough. Every once in a while (perhaps increasingly so that farther I got into the project!) a little part of me would mention, "You know, the vessel will still hold water, even if its sides aren't smooth . . ." The same thing would happen as I tried to get my now-solid whistles to sound: "Well, that was pretty close to a note - you could hear that from across the room - so what if it's a little airy?"  The standards of the pots we've found, however, are much higher than these; that, or with rose-tinted glasses, we perceive it to be so. I wonder if there was a lot of experimentation and "good-enough" pottery, that perhaps we haven't been as likely to find, or that was more likely to be broken? Or perhaps pottery was important enough that everything truly did have to be perfect in order to find use. Whatever the reason, I remain very impressed by what those long before me have accomplished - on the whole, they were far more skilled than I.