My grandmother finally saw my work in person and said it reminded her of the clay nativity figures her village used to make
She came to the studio today. I've been sending her photos for like two years but she's never actually touched any of it until now. She picked up this lopsided little vessel with a face pressed into the side, one I almost scrapped because the glaze crawled weird, and she just held it for a minute. Then she said the glaze looked like the old robes on the figures from her village in Extremadura, the ones they'd bring out for Christmas, all blotchy and wrong but full of something.
I don't think she knows how much that meant. She's the one person who never made me feel stupid for doing this, even when I was living off tortilla de patatas and rage. I made her take a piece home, the one she liked. She tried to say no. I won.
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That moment when someone who knows you before the work exists sees it and connects it to something real from their own life, there's nothing like it. The fact that she saw the glaze and went straight to the nativity figures, the village ones, the ones with character... she understood what you were doing better than anyone who walks into a gallery cold. Those "wrong" glazes are where the life is. My mother said my etchings looked like "sad homework" once, so I'm genuinely moved by this.
Ah that second bit got me, "sad homework." Sure that's brutal but I can't help laughing either, the absolute clarity of it. Your mother's a critic anyway.
But the grandmother though. The thing about the nativity figures, the ones that are a bit wrong and all the better for it, that's a real seeing, isn't it. She's not saying "well done" or "that's nice," she's placing the work into a world she already knows, connecting it to something that mattered. You can't fake that. The glaze crawled and she saw robes. That's the kind of looking you'd wait years for.
honestly i've been turning it over in my head all day. she didn't even say it like it was a compliment, just stated it, like it was obvious. that's what got me.
and yeah "sad homework" is gonna haunt me in the best way. my mother's got a gift lmao
mate, "sad homework" is absolutely devastating, i'd have framed it. your mother's a natural.
but yeah, the thing about my grandmother is she doesn't know anything about ceramics, she just knows what something feels like. she's never once asked me when i'm getting a real job. that alone is everything.