When I first started making pots for my plants, the pots were pretty normal. They had level rims so water wouldn't run out. They had rounded sides. And they had drain holes, of course.
But the place I made the pots was a studio run by an artist. He taught me a lot about ceramics. We chatted about art in general. He was an accomplished and well-recognized sculptor in this region.
So I made some more pots. The pots gradually became more complex. The forms grew less geometric and more organic looking. They had interest in and of themselves, not only as places to put plants.
So my instructor invited me to display one of my pots in a gallery show. The gallery featured paintings, drawings, photographs and ceramics. I brought in my pot. It had a drain hole in the bottom.
My instructor took me aside and explained that art does not have drain holes. Art is meant to stand alone, pure and clean, on a pedestal, in a gallery with people holding wine glasses and wearing high heels gazing upon them with admiration (my paraphrase of his comment.)
So my instructor, to avoid embarassement within the art community, asked me to put something into the pot before it went on display in the gallery - to hide the drain hole. "OK" I promised him.
That night I tossed and turned. What to put in that pot? The answer came at 2:15 AM.
The next morning I found the old box with elk vertebrae in the barn. I had stumbled on them in the woods while cruising timber. It was a complete backbone of a mature elk, fully decayed and lovely to behold. The individual vertebrae pieces fit together clean and elegantly. There were about a dozen in the box.
So I took the vertebrae to the gallery and put them into the pot. They filled it to the brim. You could no longer see the drain hole.
"Your piece needs a title." my mentor advised me.
"Easy", I told him, "This piece is titled 'Just Add Water'."
I'd show you a picture, but that was so long ago.
I learned something then. I learned that some people make rules. Some people break them. And some live around them. Take what you get and just add water.
Say you want to make pots for your plants, for your garden or home. You get a bag of clay. You scoop out a handful. Now what?
Have you noticed that whenever you go to buy a pot at the store, they are all round? (Stupid question, I know ...) But why round?
There are many good reasons. First, from a mathematical perspective, a sphere holds the highest possible volume for any given surface area. Or, to put it another way, you need less clay to hold a gallon of water with a round pot, than you would with any other form. Round is efficient. Round is fast and easy. It can be done mechanically using a wheel.
Potters have traditionally mass produced pots (or "ware") for other people. It was an industrial process. Using a potter's wheel, a potter can crank out a lot of pots in the day. Round pots are functional, cheap, easy to make, efficient and ... boring.
So potters rely on glazes to liven up their boring forms. Or they distort the forms while the clay is still wet, or they add cute things to the surface to draw the viewer's attention. Still, the fundamental form is round and ... boring.
The ancient Americans did not use wheels. They built their pots using slow and techniques like coils and slab construction . When they hand built anything round, it was because that is the most efficient form for every day practical use.
But we are a technological species. Making pots using wheels has become a luxury activity. Potters in developed countries can bask in the therapeutic calm of hands on clay, while spinning calmly beneath them, moving to the caress of the fingers. Throwing clay on the wheel soothes the soul, but it can't compete with the mold-casting high production factories that spit out clay pots for the masses. Throwing clay on the wheel is anachronistic. it's fine for fun, but has a very limited scope of possibilities.
Hand building is slow. It can be awkward. Failure rates are high at first, until the potter figures out what they can get away with. The thing has to stand up!
But hand building allows for the expression of life, movement, tension, drama. None of which is possible using a round wheel.
Consider the geometry of life. Life forms (excepting plants ... an interesting idea for later) tend to be bilateral A living body has a right and a left side. When both sides appear identical, you have symmetry. Symmetry can be pleasing to behold, but when one side gets out of whack with the other you see tension, movement, drama. Those qualities can arouse emotions in a viewer. And art is all about emotions.
Round is fine for the planets and for daisy flowers, but the bilateral form is the stuff of life and of art.
That is why I build my pots by hand and not with the wheel. If I were in a hurry, or had to sell a lot of pots, I would use a wheel. But you and I are making pots for our plants. We have time. No one cares how our pots look. That's a recipe for freedom.
Next time - a drainage hole? Or not?
