My grandmother asked why all my pieces look "sad" and I didn't know how to answer
My abuela came over yesterday and was looking at the pieces drying on the shelf. She said, "Mateo, why do they all look so sad?" and pointed at this little vessel I made that has a face melted into the side of it, half-tilted, like it's thinking about a nap.
And I said "they're not sad, they're... contemplative." She just laughed at me. "Contemplative. My foot."
She's not wrong though. Everything I make leans. Nothing sits straight. Is that melancholy or is it just what clay does when you don't fight it? Kind of a lazy question but I've been turning it over since. I don't think they're sad. I think they're tired. There's a difference. Maybe I'm the one who's tired.
Anyway she left with one of them. The saddest one. Said it reminded her of my uncle. Abuelas always keep things weird.
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I think your grandmother and you are both right, honestly. Sad is what the thing looks like from the outside. Contemplative is what it feels like from inside the making. Nobody sits at a wheel for hours and comes out with "sad" in their hands, but that's not the point she's making either.
I work in mosaic, so I know the leaning thing. If I set everything perfectly level and true, it looks dead. A tile set just off plumb is what makes it breathe. The work has a center of gravity and it's rarely the geometric one.
The real question underneath hers is whether that lean is something you're choosing or something you can't help. I'd say it doesn't matter much. The pieces that stay straight are the ones that never had anything to say.
Also "contemplative, my foot" from an abuela is a compliment. Take it. 🙂
That's the whole thing right there, the plumb line. Your grandmother sees off-center and reads it as unhappiness because that's what leaning is in people. But the clay doesn't fight gravity, it answers it. A straight pot is a pot that refused something.
I've spent forty years stacking things that were never meant to stack again, and I can tell you: precise alignment reads as monument, as memorial. The tilt is where the life got in. Your grandmother is seeing it from where she stands, you're seeing it from where you stood when you made it. Both are true views of the same object. That's not a bad place for a piece to sit.
"The tilt is where the life got in", yeah, okay, that got me. Forty years, that's a lot of kiln openings, tell me you've lost a few good ones in there too. Because that's the other side of it, right? Straight things survive the fire. The leaning ones are the ones that crack and you have to love them anyway.
My abuela said "my foot" and walked off to put the kettle on, so she's winning this round. But I'm keeping your line. It's going next to the other one, my studio wall's becoming a graveyard of other people's good sentences about my sad pots.
"the work has a center of gravity and it's rarely the geometric one" I'm writing that down, that's going on my studio wall. That's exactly it.
I've been beating myself up thinking I'm just not disciplined enough to make things sit straight. But when I do force it level and perfect it looks... dead. You said it better than I could. The off-plumb tile is what makes it breathe. Yeah. Yeah.
Also mosaic, respect. That's a different kind of patience than clay, I'd lose my mind cutting all those pieces. What do you make? Like abstract stuff or figures?