I play. I play with paint, I play with words, I play with sounds. I try to capture something… that’s what I do. I just live, really, and I try to document the details.

When I can let go of the expectation of a product… when I can not think about impressing someone, but just be there, in that moment, expressing that thing… that’s when I feel like I do what I do.

I like to be surprised. I think it takes bravery to just be there and maybe do something unexpected. Without needing to impress anyone. Without needing to please or appeal to anyone.

But I don’t always have that bravery.

I don’t like things to be too perfect or contrived. I don’t want pottery to be too smooth or “pretty”. I don’t want photographs to be too posed. I want to see the imperfections. I want to see the human touch.

Even if this isn’t what I always do, it is what I strive for, and what I admire in art.

Today I walked along a dirt road, and I looked down at the compressed gravel. I imagined what it would look like if I threw a large pot, and then rolled it on the surface of the road. In an area without many larger pebbles. I wonder what it would do in the kiln? How would the glaze collect on the texture from the road, and whatever gravel might stick…

That’s where my mind went today.

A couple of weeks ago, I photographed lichen on an ancient rock face along a river near my house, and I wondered if you could make a glaze that looked like that.

I think about pottery a lot, but I am not a potter. Not yet, anyway.