What Causes Becca to Wince
19 September 2022
“I’m an artist.”
To date, I (Becca) don’t think I’ve been able to utter that simple sentence without a wince, eye twitch, or a half-dozen qualifications. When I share my discomfort at identifying thusly, I’m usually met with the laughter of disbelief, but it’s true. The accomplishments and struggles of artists I know often feel lofty beside the joy I get from throwing clay.
But then an except from Mary Oliver’s poem “Sometimes” reassures me like a hand extended over a waterfall’s slippery stones.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
And I figure, if making ceramic art is my response to attentive wonder, then okay, I’ll identify as an artist. (Even still, *eye immediately begins twitching.*)
In the last twelve years, that process of attention and making has come full circle enough times that I’m learning to trust the Breath that quickens my imagination and draws my eye.
In March 2019, for example, I was visiting my brother who was studying abroad in Madrid. I remember with great fondness our frequent snack stops for drinking chocolate and churos. We laughed when folks repeatedly mistook us for a honeymoon couple in Mallorca. Micah introduced me to paella, a classic Spanish dish which rivals fried rice as the best way to enjoy the little white grain. One morning, we set out for a quiet sunrise hike up the narrow cobblestone streets for a view of the Al-Hambra, the breathtakingly gorgeous Moorish fortress-palace in Granada.
We like food…
…a lot. Leah says these are familiar Ito family expressions of gastronomic bliss.
Sunrise overlooking the Al-Hambra, 14th century Moorish fortress-castle.
My sleepiness faded like the morning fog we walked through. I was dazzled by the vivid, geometric tile work set into walls, fountains — even the streets we trod. Not only had Islamic architects built roads to last centuries (take note, Indy), but they seemed to have insisted on beauty framing that functional excellence.
Look! The tilework! The stone etchings! I couldn’t get enough of it and Micah was fabulously patient with all my geeky photo-taking.
Just a typical gate of a typical house lining the streets in Cordoba.
Fast-forward to March 2020. In COVID lockdown, I borrowed a wheel from the community studio. I could throw pieces but not fire them immediately: limited space and limitless time. So I lavished hours carving designs into pottery. One experimental form, stackable tumblers, extended a particular invitation. Being new to the shape, I struggled to make them exactly the same size. That made the stacking function hit-or-miss: one right way and several wrong ones to put the set together. I thought of numbering the cups so people would only try slipping #1 into #2 and never the other way around.
In my first-ever home studio during March 2020. Oh the glories of baking bread, napping on the couch, and throwing to my heart’s content, all in one place!
Then I came upon the word “key.” I wanted a visual key to guide people in their enjoyment of these tumbler sets. How about half circles? I asked. Different textures? Stars would be fun. Moorish eight-pointed stars. Yes!
At that point I’d bought a fun protractor for five dollars on Amazon — still one of the most useful things in my studio. I spent a solid afternoon sketching the first star, studying blueprint plans for the Al-Hambra and trying to follow their step-by-step process in medieval Arabic. As it transpires, you don’t need a quarter as many lines. What once took three hours to sketch now takes three minutes to carve on a mug — so acquainted have I become with this motif.
My first imitation of the Moorish motif.
A watercolored iteration of that geometric fascination. During the lockdown, several friends received letters in the mail with some variation of this with a letter on the back.
