family

My parents are the "Fletcher" in my name (as well as my boys') and the foundation on which my sense of family has been built. They are encouraging and supportive and so when I started taking ceramics classes a year (or two?) ago, my dad surprised me by making a custom clay tool. It stamps my initials into the soft clay on the bottom of my work. He is a woodworker but can really make anything he puts his mind to - he's pretty amazing. The stamp works beautifully. He modeled it after my own configuration of hand writing/carving of my initials, but these letter forms are pleasingly clean and simple - beautifully influenced by the materials used.

Dad's stamp also works well on other materials and so I can stamp lightly onto fabric and then stitch over it.

I am working through a stack of pieces - many started quite awhile ago. Some of them have become overwhelmed with my original intention of what I hoped for them to be or mean. When that happens I eventually put them aside and now there's a stack of them - looking all lonely. In the midst of normal family chaos of day to day life it is the meditative stitch that I so often need. So they won't all turn out to be what I originally intended because I am going to lighten their load of intention just a bit. In the end I think cloth just begs to be lived with and useful - part of a family.

If only just a sense of all that can be stitched into what I make then it will be enough. All the comforts, the calm and sometimes chaotic - past and present of home. It's all in there.

ceramics student

I am looking forward to my next ceramics class - continuing with wheel throwing. Class starts up again this week (once we are through all the cancellations and delays due to the bitter cold). All good stuff - learning something new, making something beautifully long-lasting and practical and (my favorite part) sharing time and conversation centered on creativity. I am so grateful to have the very talented artist and teacher Soyong Kang Partingon as my instructor. For local friends considering a ceramics class - Soyong teaches at our local Sullivan Munce Cultural Center and also at the Indianapolis Art Center.

I thought about taking classes for years and have been so happy that I finally did it. I have been inspired by these ceramics classes in so many ways. I have truly loved being home with the boys for many years and really enjoy freelancing from home, but I have really missed the creative buzz that happens in learning something new in the physical presence of other people who are very interested in doing the same.

The blue bowl above is a favorite from last class. I like the practicality of the wide shallow dimensions and hope to produce a few more like it. Before this it was mostly cat size bowls - and that was before I had a cat. I now have so much appreciation for what goes into making something out of clay. There is much time invested in following a piece through each step of throwing, drying, trimming, embellishing, firing, glazing and firing again. In the end there is this thoughtfully produced object, both beautiful and practical that will likely long outlast me. I really like that.

I would like to eventually think about a relationship between cloth and bowl or cloth and vessel - lots of possibilities there. Goals for this class - maybe four good size bowls of a very similar size and shape possibly resembling a set. That would be really nice. Also maybe a pie plate, we like pie.