I build big dumb pots [affectionate], and coil is my primary method of making.
Initially, I was reluctant to work in coil. I had coiled about three pieces in my life, including two from elementary school, and this wealth of experience suggested to me that coil was a slow, strange way to create. I wasn’t (and still am not) drawn to visible coils in finished pieces, which seemed to be a key reason to use this method. Once I began wheel throwing, with its capacity for near-perfect symmetry and faster making time, there didn’t seem to be any reason to try coiling in earnest.
However, given sufficient time and a few key videos on Youtube, I decided to give large-scale building a try. I wasn’t convinced that coil was preferable to wheel when making reasonably-sized things, but if I wanted to make unreasonably-sized things, it might be my best move.
I had long felt that I was experimenting to find my artistic voice. I can say that I was at least looking for it. I was building skills, technique, and knowledge, but I knew on a basic level that I really hadn’t found the thing I wanted to fall headfirst into. Then I started making big dumb pots, and my practice changed.
I enjoy coil for the kinds of shapes it allows. It can be used to create hyperbolic space, which is a fun and unusual plane (crochet also has this capability—email me if you know more media that can do this!). Coil can create fluctuating, iterative strangeness, and the possibilities of extreme asymmetry: expansion, contraction, and fractal-type propagation.
I think a term for these kinds of vessels could be “anti-functional.” This is not to suggest that the pieces are nonfunctional, but instead that the purpose of these vessels is not their ability to be functional. That’s not the most important thing about them.
“Functional” is a term with an agenda. It requires a user (subject) and a used (object). The object serves; the subject sets the terms. A vessel is “functional” when it is used frequently, serves a purpose the subject benefits from, and, sometimes (but not always) disappears into the mechanisms of the subject’s greater life. Symmetry is a common feature of functionality, because it increases a vessel’s ability to hold or contain.
What I want to challenge about this is the serving/served dichotomy. I firmly believe that pottery is a relationship of equals between potter and clay. The potter influences the what, certainly, but the clay defines the how. The clay, through the responses it gives the potter across time, trains the potter regarding the treatment it will accept. It is clear and minces no words. Therefore, the piece cannot survive if the potter ignores the materiality of the clay. It’s supremely obvious, as well as utterly profound.
A vessel may be something that holds, but there are many ways to hold, and many things to be held. I consider questions like:
- If a vessel is something that holds, what kinds of things, tangible and ephemeral, does it hold?
- Is it okay for a vessel to hold without approaching maximum capacity (convex symmetry)?
- What makes a vessel inherently worthy?
As the artist, I feel it’s my job to respect and listen closely to the materials I work with. This conversation between equals yields a new vessel, and the vessel holds many things:
the care of the artist for their clay;
the generosity of the clay for their artist;
the memories and time of its creation;
among many possible others.
When working on a vessel, I feel an emotional connection with it and the process, and I feel deeply the reality that vessels are not only meant to hold, but to be held and taken care of. The vessels grow to the size of a small child or a rib cage, and I feel an instinct to cradle and embrace.
nightbird ceramics 