One good thing to come from the recent high winds, for me at least, is that a few trees have come down and I have had a delivery of logs. This very wet pile is cherry, sycamore and some elm. I've stripped it of most of the ivy and will cover it so that it can season for next year. It seems strange to be thinking of 2015 already, but I have to plan my wood supply well ahead.
After a few weeks of planning, drawing, writing and taking photographs it is a REAL pleasure to get back in the workshop, making for the next firing. After so much time spent in the abstracted world of thought my immersion in the physical world of matter and action is startlingly refreshing. In my workshop with my hands in the clay, music playing, alternating sleeting rain and low slung sun dazzling through the windows, I couldn't be happier. That must be why I love woodfiring. So much in our lives is abstracted away from our direct experience or done by machines that we risk losing touch with our relationship to the Earth. This whole process that I work with, making things from clays and rocks that I have collected and processed myself runs contrary to that, and woodfiring insists on total commitment to the physical here and now.
No comments:
Post a Comment