Musing while staring at my clunk of the day: People keep asking to see my keeper bowls (afters), but I just keep on turning discards (befores). I try to deny or justify my clunks by including them in my 'Shabby Chic Series' as they pile up on my shop shelves. I don't need helpful critique, I need solace and the taste of vanilla. Bet I could get it too if I could only post a pic to one of the upper class picture groups.
It wouldn't matter that my bowls have feet 7/8's the size of the top and are festooned with screw holes; that the walls are straight and thick and the widest diameter is exactly half way up the sides; that the rims vary in width and slant down and out; that the inside bears no relation to the outside, and is scalloped with rough spots at the opposing end grain with a dome in dead center. Like I said, none of that really matters. Forms with Golden ratios as found on fine hog troughs bedamned. Somebody would surely brag on my bowl, and I'd be glad of it and quite proud too.
My bowls are sanded to 60 grit and are burnished til the fibers lie as flat as a cornfield in a hurricane. They are covered with enough coats of hi-gloss varnish for the ugly glow of the grain to disappear, and the surface to shine with all the lovely patina of fine old plastic. Yes indeed, I would look forward to certain accolades.
Each bowl in my shabby chic series sports machined carvings of buzzards roosting in kudzu. All done in pleasingly garish colors. Although the art isn't as fine, they superficially look a little like Wal Mart's Spring collection of ceramic ash trays. If I only could post a pic, surely praise and thanksgiving would come my way, and I wouldn't care if it was a knee-kick response. Drats! I forgot, there will be no Nirvana in my shop. Even if I did have a digital camera, Web-Tv wouldn't recognize it, so I'm doomed to slog on with my series.
Guess I'll stay with this tacky narrative newsgroup and forgo the joys of my work being "really liked". Maybe I'll upgrade to a pic-group next week, but don't get your hopes up. Arch
p.s. To pic-group friends who cross-lurk, I'm just kidding. I do enjoy the pictures.
Fortiter,