Re: Judges Comments

Morgan Larch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 

> 
> This is all sooo curious to me! The analagy of sitting in a cave
> and making stuff is just that, sitting in a closet and talking
> to one's self. That is to say, if one's work does not talk
> to an audience, it does just that, it speaks to no one and wont
> ever pass for art, by definition.

Well, I don't know that I can completely agree with that.  It's something 
that I've been giving a lot of recent thought to, as it happens.  I was a 
poet for a long time and came to the realization that, for me, the 
perfect poem was spoken once and once only into exactly the right ear and 
never repeated.  The very ephemeral nature of it was part of the art, 
part of the longing to reach out and touch that drive all communications.  
IMHO.

Now I'm embarking on a different kind of art.  There's something that 
Peter Voulkos said one time that stuck in my brain like a lance. He made 
reference to his later works being increasingly gestural.  That notion of 
a pot being a gesture frozen in time has become a very powerful image for 
me.  As I'm learning what interaction with clay is most satisfying, I'm 
realizing the very simple and obvious truth that graceful gestures create 
graceful pots.  Duh! That realization shouldn't have taken more than 
about a nanosecond's thought, but it came as kind of an embarrassing 
shock to realize it.

The moving from an evanescent art form to a tangible art form is an 
interesting transition.  Or maybe it's not.  It is, at least, to me.

And one of the notions that I find most interesting is the notion of how 
people's pedigrees are important to their work.  Frankly, it seems like 
utter bullshit to me.  A graceful gesture, a vivacious pot is what it is 
regardless of whether is a complete dumb accident or the result of being 
institutionalized in a land-grant university or life in a garret around 
the corner from the Sorbonne.  Why should that matter?  Beauty is.  It 
shouldn't need to know it's name.  It's existence, it seems to me, is 
enough.

Whether something is regarded by the ages as sacred or profane is quite 
possibly as much a function of fashion and trend as it is anything else.
-- 
Spunky the Tuna