Something Relevant (Perhaps)

After finishing my first set of pots - well, my first two true pots, and my first multitude of misshapen attempts - I had to admit to myself that, for all my ideas, I wasn't really sure where to go next. Did I want to model a few figurines from early Europe? Or maybe one from the Nazca culture? Or maybe, I ought to build myself a  foot-driven pottery wheel and try something from early Egypt . . .

Ah, the possibilities (some more likely than others). What, then, did I end up doing? Well, naturally, I went for creating a small dish with a pair of dolphins arched down to it on one side, exploring.

Admittedly, this had nothing to do with ancient pottery. Not on the surface, at least. This particular project represents simply the result of me throwing in some headphones, sitting down in front of some clay, and letting my hands do pretty much whatever occurred to them. But - call it passion, or obsession, or just plain weirdness - my thoughts did still trend, often, to potters and artists living thousands of years ago.

As I coerced the clay into forming fins and flippers, I thought about the effort required to make sediment and water look like a particular animal or figure. It's a rewarding process, definitely, especially when you're working with something as simple and streamlined as my little dolphins. But it also demands a lot of attention - and a lot of familiarity with what you're trying to represent. Questions come up that a casual observer of animals wouldn't think to ask - like, exactly how far along down the back is the dorsal fin of a dolphin? One quarter, two thirds, one half maybe? And precisely how deep do I make the median notch between these flukes? Some of these things inevitably end up decided by aesthetics rather than anatomical correctness, in my case today as well as, I imagine, in ancient figurines.

Even so, the fact remains that it's harder than I'd expected to make a truly realistic representation of something. There had, from time to time, been part of me that looked at slightly abstracted ancient art and wondered, "Why not make the darn thing look the way it really looked? I mean, they must have seen birds like that every day, right? That's a lot of opportunity to study." The assumption was that, given enough time and patience, anything lifelike could be created. However, especially in working with clay, an unlimited of time is not given to the artist; eventually, things begin drying out. And while things are wet, often one part of the piece will misbehave while you're trying to fix another part entirely. My final realization came down to this: anything that ancient potters took the time to shape by hand, to make instantly recognizable, must have been something important to themselves or to their culture. After all, why did I sit down and make a pair of dolphins, and struggle so to make them as perfect as I could? Not only because they're some of my favorite creatures, but because they hold a lot of meaning for me. Often I think people look at ancient artifacts and get lost in thinking about technology, resources, or high trends in art. We tend to forget that these things also may have held very personal meanings to those who made them; but in thinking about those meanings, we can establish deeper connections with the objects, and possibly with the shadows of the artists behind them.