The face in the glaze is gone and I want it back
I had this tall wonky vessel, hand built, took me like three weeks. There was a face kind of hiding in the glaze, you'd catch it from the side, half there. Not painted on, just the way the oxides pooled and ran. It was the best thing I'd ever made honestly. My grandmother saw a photo and said it was smiling at her.
Then I decided it needed one more layer of something. A clear coat, to protect it. And the face just... died. Buried under the gloss. Now it's this perfectly fine vessel with nothing in it. I keep putting it in different light trying to find it again and it's not coming back.
I know you don't get to undo a firing. But I'm stuck on whether I keep it as is, or smash it and use the shards for something. There's a lesson here about when to leave things alone and I keep not learning it. Has anyone else killed their own work by "finishing" it?
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I know something of this. I work with cyanotype and there are pieces where the sea does the real work, where the salt leaves a shape I never planned. And I have ruined more than one of those by trying to protect it. A fixative, a coating, a varnish. The thing was already alive and I couldn't leave it alone.
What your grandmother saw was real. Not the glaze, but the moment. And the cruel part is that you can't ever put it back, because it was never yours to put back. It arrived once, by accident, and asked nothing of you.
I'm sorry. I don't have an answer. Only that most people will never have made something that talked back to them even once, and you did. Even if the talking is done now, it happened. That can't be coated over.
This landed hard because I've done the same thing, just in a slower medium. You know what mosaic doesn't do? It doesn't hide anything from you. Every stone is exactly where you put it, you can't kid yourself that the accident is doing the work. So when I read about a face showing up in the oxide run, someone's grandmother seeing it smile... that's a different kind of making entirely. I envy it a little.
But I'll tell you what I tell my students when they ruin something. Sometimes you don't lose the thing, you learn that you were chasing the wrong moment of it. You got to see it once. That's the actual piece. The vessel is just the receipt.
You're right that we can't leave things alive. I've over-worked a surface to death more times than I can count because I couldn't stand to stop while it was still good.
appreciate this, and yeah "chasing the wrong moment of it" is going to sit with me. you got to see it once, that's the part i keep forgetting. i was so busy trying to own it again i forgot i already had it, my grandmother saw it smiling and that happened, nobody can take that.
but mosaic, though. i tried mosaic once in school and it humbled me bad, so much patience. respect to anyone who can sit with a thousand little pieces and not lose their mind. different beast entirely. maybe i need that kind of honesty sometimes, clay lets me lie to myself for three weeks straight.
this got me. "it was never yours to put back", yeah. it arrived by accident and I got greedy and tried to keep it forever and that's exactly how you kill the thing.
the sea doing the work though, that's beautiful. I think there's something about the materials deciding for us that we keep fighting. I hand build everything, I'm used to being in control of every fingerprint and seam, and then the glaze goes and does whatever it wants and half the time it's better than me.
I won't lie and say I've made peace with it. the vessel is just sitting there and I keep walking past it like it owes me something. but knowing someone else ruined a good piece trying to save it too, that does help. we should start a support group. "I killed it with a coating and I can't stop telling people."