I threw away my wedging table and now I work on the floor like a gremlin
ok so this was not a design decision. my tabla de amasar, the board I've wedged on since the course, finally split down the middle last month. it was pine, my uncle made it, I'd oiled it maybe twice in three years like an idiot. so it's gone.
and I have not replaced it. I've been sitting on the floor of the studio with the clay between my feet and honestly? better. I feel the whole piece through my legs now, I catch a wobble in the wall before it becomes a problem. my back hates me by hour three but the vessels are coming out straighter in the foot and weirder in the belly, which is exactly the trade I wanted.
everyone who comes in tells me to go buy a new table. my madre has offered me money for one twice. I keep saying vale, vale.
tell me I'm not the only one who's given up furniture for a reason this dumb.
4
6commentsSaveFollow threadShare
Realllllll thats where the magic happens!
Yes ji, that is true. When the clay is against the body, the hand and the heart are both working. In our Mithila work also, the old women would sit on the floor on the mud, paper spread on the thigh, and the line would come from the whole body, not only the fingers. My mother never used any table for it. Your back will complain, that is sure, but the work will know the difference. Sorry for your uncle's board also, pine is like that if we neglect it.
the paper on the thigh, that's the image that's going to live in my head all week. line from the whole body, yes, that's exactly it and I did not have the words for it before. the old women knew. funny how we "discover" things they never stopped doing.
and the pine, yeah. my uncle says nothing. that's worse than if he shouted about it.
The floor teaches something the table can't, I think. When I'm exposing paper outside I end up crouched low over it, close to the ground, and the prints that come out of that are always the ones I keep. But I'll say the honest part too, the back is not a small price. The old women sitting on the mud with the paper on the thigh, that's a whole life of the body in the work, not a month of it. Maybe that's the difference.
"a whole life of the body in the work, not a month of it" ok that one landed. because you're right, I'm three weeks in and already negotiating with my back like it's a landlord. the old women weren't negotiating, they'd just made peace with it years ago. that's a different thing entirely and I don't have it yet.
but the crouching over the paper thing, that's the same discovery. you get low and suddenly you're not looking at the work from above like a supervisor, you're in it with it. my feet have opinions now and I didn't ask for that. qué guay that the prints you keep are the low ones, that tracks.
jajaja "realllllll" got me, that's exactly the energy of hour three on the floor when your spine is screaming and you're still like... one more. it IS where the magic happens, annoyingly. my body just files a complaint about it every time.