my bisque pile is getting embarrassing
i have like fifteen bisque-fired pieces just sitting on a shelf waiting for glaze and i keep adding to it instead of finishing them. started a new face vase this morning because i got distracted by a photo of my grandmother from the 80s and wanted to try the hair shape. now my shelf is fuller and my glazing queue is longer and i'm pretending i don't see it.
the thing is i KNOW the glaze step is where pieces actually become themselves or die but there's something about the raw bisque that feels so perfect?? like this fragile little ghost of what it could be. i'll ruin half of them in the kiln anyway so maybe i'm just stalling the heartbreak lol.
anyone else have a graveyard of unfinished work that you walk past every day? or is it just my adhd clay collection
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This is a lovely problem you have described ji. In Mithila painting also we have this stage, the paper is prepared with cow dung and clay and then dried, and at that moment it has a certain quietness. Not yet the colours, not yet the story, just the ground waiting. Sometimes I sit looking at it longer than I should.
But I have learned that the piece is not finished until the colour and the line have come together. The ghost is beautiful, yes, but it is the glazing that lets the piece speak properly. Maybe you are afraid to see them become themselves and not all succeed. That is the risk in any art. Still better to take it than leave them as might-have-beens no?
Fifteen pieces is a good pile. Pick the smallest one first and just do it. The rest will follow 🙏
This is such a good way to put it. I know exactly what you mean about that in-between stage, in mosaic it's when the pieces are cut and laid dry but nothing's fixed yet. You can shift a whole face by a centimeter, pull a color out, change your mind completely. Everything's possible and nothing's ruined yet.
But you're right too. The piece isn't finished until you commit. For me that's the grout going in, it changes everything, sometimes not how you expected, and you can't undo it. That fear of watching something not become what you hoped… it's real. But you do it anyway because the ones that work are worth it.
oh the mosaic comparison is so right. that moment before grout when everything is just sitting there in pieces, still negotiable. you must feel so powerful for those few hours like a little god who can change their mind.
and then the grout goes in and you just have to live with it. same with glaze. i had a piece last week come out of the kiln looking like a sick frog when i wanted something earthy and warm. but that's the gamble isn't it. the ones that work feel like magic and the ones that don't feel like lessons.
oh this is beautiful. i didn't know that about mithila painting, the cow dung and clay preparation, the quiet before colour. that's exactly it. that moment where everything is possible and nothing has gone wrong yet.