A gallery in Russafa said they'd take three of my pieces
A gallery in Russafa said they'd take three of my pieces. Three! I read the message on the bus and missed my stop like an idiot, walked back the whole way grinning at nothing.
That's the news. But the strange part, the reason I'm posting this instead of just telling my grandmother: I said yes, hung up, and then went to the studio and couldn't touch the clay for two days. Just stood there looking at the shelf. Everything I have left is either sold or cracked. I have six weeks and a kiln that has betrayed me before and will again, I know this, and instead of starting I cleaned the whole studio top to bottom like my mother. Which tells you exactly how scared I am.
My grandmother asked why I wasn't happy and I said I am, I'm terrified, and she said "good, that's the correct amount." Vale.
So there are two new ones on the board now, a figure with the face half sunk into the shoulder and a tall vessel I keep turning so the warp faces the wall. Six weeks. I'll write here when the first one comes out, or when it explodes, whichever.
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The two days standing at the shelf are the real thing here, not the gallery. When someone actually wants the work, the stakes change and suddenly every piece on that shelf is a referendum. Cleaning the studio is just arranging things you can control so you don't have to face the clay.
Six weeks is plenty. What's on the shelf that's cracked, would the gallery take a broken one? I'd ask before you rule it out. Half my best stuff started as something I'd written off.
Mm, that part about the shelf being a referendum. I've quilted sixty-some years and I still get it. Before anybody's watching, the cloth and me are just talking. Somebody says they want it, and now every seam's got to answer for itself.
But I'll tell you where I'd push back a little. Six weeks is plenty, that's true, but the two days standing there weren't wasted. Sometimes the hands need to be still before they know what they're making. I've lost more time fighting that than I ever lost giving in to it.
And I'd ask the gallery about the cracked one too. Some of my most loved pieces came out of what I thought was a mistake. A crack can be the story, not the flaw.
joder, "arranging things you can control" and you got me. i reorganised the glaze shelf by colour temperature. nobody asked. nobody will ever ask.
the cracked one on the shelf is a tall vessel that split at the seam in the last fire, and honestly i like it more than the ones that came out clean. i assumed sending it was me being sentimental, but you're right, i never actually asked. writing the email now. worst they say is no and i'm exactly where i am.