Day Nineteen

I made only 8 vessels out of 16 I wanted to make. I still take longer time to make taller vessels. I am starting noting time I take to throw each piece not only to help me estimate the time the project requires but also to know when to take a break. I did the same thing while working on the bowl project which was my first production work. I noted the time I took to throw each bowl and soon I found my pattern: every 90 minutes I became tired and the throwing time became seginificantly longer, as twice as long. So after 90 munites is a good timing to take a break. This was about 3 years ago so I am curious how I do now. Although sometimes I like working non-stop without watching the clock, totally immersing myself in the work, when I need to meet a deadline I'd better off learning my own pattern.  I am paying more attention to what I eat and how I sleep also. I cannot afford to get sick. When I was employed I had the luxury of taking a day off when my body requires a rest but I am on my own. I want to maintain a good health.

Day Eighteen

This is a physical work. It is like a sport. My body is achy. I threw 8 7-lbs vessels and prepared clay for 8 8-lbs and 8 7-lbs vessels to be thrown. I am supposed to throw 24 vessels tomorrow to catch up on the schedule. They are open forms so it will take less time but I will probably be able to make 16 of them and can finish up the remaining 8 the following day.   Once everything is thrown I can relax a little.

I am enjoying making larger pieces more. It involves a movement of my whole body and not just my arms and hands. If I loose focus and start thinking about something else the form starts to wobble. I am working with the clay. I have never work with materials as intimately as I do with clay. It tells me what it wants to do if I focus and listen to it just like a conversation to get to know a person. I can't force it, I let it know what I want it to do, I need to know what it wants to do and work with it. When I focus and be engaged with the clay it will give me a shape I want but if I loose my attention I will loose the shape too. 

Thinking about hosting salon nights at the studio and invite people from different fields to have a conversation. 

Day Seventeen

I got in to the studio a few minutes before 8 am. I now have a better rhythm in starting the day. I changed to my work clothes, put an electric kettle on for tea, checked on the drying pieces, got a bucket of hot water from the sink in the hallway, put music on, and mopped the floor. Another big nectarine-color hibiscus flower has bloomed over night. I said hello to it. It's nice to have living things around.

I trimmed the round vessels I threw yesterday. I still end up with a thick wall when I throw a vessel with a small neck and need to trim a lot more than I want. I want to avoid trimming too much. I feel it will make the piece look and feel like the trimming tool rather than my hand if I trim too much after throwing. I don't like a thick wall either for the pieces I am making now as it will make the piece look stiff and rather lifeless. Also thick pieces weigh more making harder for me to move them around in the studio and also cost more to ship. Most of all they require a longer time to dry. I don't want to make them too thin either where it starts to look fragile or delicate. I want them to look alive, self supporting, and healthy. Then I put together round forms and cylindrical forms I threw yesterday. When assembled they look like a round head on a cylindrical neck.

After a lunch break around 2:30pm an exhaustion hit me. I sat in the hammock under the loft and started massaging my hands. Then I fell asleep again just like last night. It could be the hand massage that puts me to sleep. I woke up around 3:30, feeling tired, started trimming a few more pieces but I was not doing it well so I covered untrimmed pieces loosely under a sheet of plastic, cleaned up and left to home early. A rest seems like the best use of my time right now. Isn't it great that I have tomorrow.  When I got out from a shower it started raining hard sounding like one of those relaxation/sleep-aid podcasts. I wish my room was facing the park so I could watch the rain.

Day Sixteen

I feel asleep while giving myself a hand and arm massage last night. I woke up this morning thinking I am going to take things a little easier once this project is done and aside from studio work, give myself time to do things I've been wanting do the past year like going to museums and the upstate to get in touch with the nature. When I told my friend Rebecca my plan for this year she gave me once piece of advice: don't: sign up on too many things. She also said, give 15 minutes for your self when you go in to the studio in the morning, and that will help you set the tone for the day. The rest will fall in. What I'm having now is the pressure of the deadlines which keep me in the studio all day all night, but I am doing the work I can call mine and I am happy working. 

Day Fifteen

I am beginning to build a better habit of cleaning clay and tools as I work so I can quickly clean up at the end of the day. Clay is easier to clean when it is still wet before it transforms itself to dust. I used to take an hour to clean up. I did not realize I was spreading a mess during the process. if I paid a little more attention I should have known that cleaning could be made easy by not creating dust to be cleaned to begin with. It's hard to realize things I don't recognize sometimes.  

I assembled the parts I threw yesterday and finished 5 large bottles and 3 trumpet shaped vessels that look much better than the first 5 pieces. This is why I cannot stop making because the one after is going to be better than the one before. It is like a ninja training of jumping over a knee-hight tree which gradually gets bigger and bigger until it eventually becomes taller than a house. Around 2pm I wanted to go outside to interact with something outside of my own brain. The building was quiet today.  Usually there are other people in other studios. I don't go around and knock on their doors but I hear them and see them in the hallway.  I like that I have my own space knowing that there are other activities next doors.  I went to a coffee shop on Graham Ave which was packed with people all looking so intensely busy over their MacBook . I looked at the paintings on the wall and started day dreaming what type of fun installation I can do and imagined giant ceramic balls floating in the middle of the space.

My hands and arms are tired. I am careful with my posture and positions of my hands but weight of clay is tough on them. Now the 2.5 lbs succulent pots drying on the shelves look so tiny compared to these vessels. I was playing Ryuichi Sakamoto's music. His piano performance is so emotional and makes me nostalgic for things I don't even remember. 

Day Fourteen

I finally brought back a mug from the studio to the apartment. After coming back from Forest - the studio - while taking a shower I was thinking about having a beer. I was craving a beer after a dinner break but it is now kind of late.  The thought of having a tea in my favorite mug while writing made me happy. It is one of the first mugs I made about 4 years ago which has a cylindrical body and an almost too delicate handle I used to like making so much. The grey semi opaque glaze on the brown clay is stoney dry on one side and drippy and cloudy on the other side, making the surface irregular and bumpy. It's one of a few things I want to keep for myself.  

The throwing today went well. I made three top portions and one bottom portion of the trumpet shape and the top and the bottom portions for 5 tall vessels. It was about 7pm and took a break for dinner. I wanted to see if I could make a few more of round vessels to catch up on the schedule. I made one okay, the second one was not good. I made a wall around the neck area too thin. I did not like it so I recycled the clay, cleaned up and left to home. I have a tendency to work non-stop until I become totally exhausted. But thinking the long run I need to listen to my body and know when my arms are tired and my wrists need good stretching.  One of the questions from the artist bio questionaries I submitted the other day asked what tools I can't live without. I said a notebook and a pencil because I need to sketch and write to think and added also my hands to the list.  I can't make anything without these. It is my job to take a good care of them.

Day Thirteen

I overestimated the speed I make these big pieces. I am taking as twice as long. I am not going to meet the deadline if I continue what I have been doing.

There are 8 forms. I would normally like starting with small ones and then move on to larger pieces to warm up, but this time I started with larger forms to give them more time to dry. I will keep it this way.

But larger one needs a even longer drying time than I estimated and needs more than a week the way they are drying now. I decided to change to way so hopefully they dry more evenly in a shorter amount of time. I took shreded wood packaging materials from Donghia when the mirror prototypes arrived in a crate. I stuffed boxes with these wood noodles, making a hole in the middle so a trumpet-shaped vessel can sit upside down. They look like giant eggs in a nest. 

I can get a help with weighing and wedging when the batch I made run out. 

I can throw faster - I am getting better at them, so that's also possible.

I can say no to other commitments - which I already did. I explained and asked to move dinner plans, studio visits, other project deadlines to February.

Monitor how I spend my time.

I can sleep - I learned this from my piano practice when I was a child. Somehow sleep makes me able to play the part I was not able to play no mater how many times I repeated the day before.  Practice but can't play, sleep, wake up and I can play almost magically. This happened not even once but many times.  I go to bed now.