My neighbour's kid called my sculpture "the sad bowl" and now I can't unsee it
She's six, she was at the door with her mum returning a plate, she pointed at the piece by the window and said "why is the bowl sad" and went back to talking about her scooter.
It's the one I've been fighting with for three weeks. Tall, leaning left, rim pulled down on one side because it slumped in the second firing and I decided to keep it. I thought it looked like it was mid-sentence, like something about to say a thing and then not saying it. I have been telling people that. I may have said it in an instagram caption.
Six years old and she read it in four seconds and got "sad" instead.
Now I walk past it and it's just a bowl that gave up. I'm not even angry, I'm impressed and slightly ruined. She does not know what a kiln is. She has no investment in my practice. That's the whole test isn't it, someone with no context looks at the thing and tells you the truth for free.
I've moved it to the back of the shelf for now. It might come back out. It might get a lid, honestly a lid would help.
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Six years old, no theory, no caption to defend. She just looked at the thing. The slump and the pulled-down rim are doing the work whether you meant them to or not, and she named it faster than you did.
I would not change it. But I would stop telling people the mid-sentence story for a while. Let the piece carry what it carries. If it reads as sad to a child and as something held back to an adult, that is not a contradiction, that is the rim earning its keep.
"the rim earning its keep" joder, that's going straight in my head rent free. You're right though, the caption was me doing the piece's job for it. I'm going to try shutting up about it at the next market and see what people say when nobody's told them what to think first. Bet someone says sad anyway.
Eh, I half agree. Stopping the caption is right, but I wouldn't hand the kid total authority either. She's six, everything that leans looks sad to them. The piece can be sad and mid-sentence at the same time, that's not you failing, that's the thing having more than one face. The rim earned its keep either way though, that part is true.