Notes on a Reset
A few random things and a big change
It’s been a while so I thought that I would begin with some random thoughts.
I didn’t watch much of the olympics, but I continue to find myself returning to Eileen Gu’s press conference answers often. I’m not sure that I have ever heard someone explain expectations versus reality with as much clarity as she did. Her thoughts on neuroplasticity, growth, and self will be bouncing around my mind for a long time.
I find myself less interested in being part of a world full of people telling us how to “hack our life” to make things better or faster. I can’t see what the end goal of most of these hacks are meant for other than to speed up our ability to consume. I am way more interested in the long-form of absolutely everything. Give me the real conversation. Give me the thing that makes me think and learn. Give me the opportunity to work through the problem and give me the ability to add that knowledge to my future work.
Theo of Golden is a lovely book. I asked Evangelina to bring a new book when she came to visit me in France. I finally sat down and read it upon our return. She bought it fairly blind at our favorite local bookstore and I knew nothing about it. It’s now on every list everywhere. I found myself in tears as I turned the last few pages.
I only recently feel like I have come back up for air from a lot of massive changes. Within the last few months, a lot happened. Most of these things were intentionally offline. I’m continuing to learn that quietness does not equal lack of progress. This is all part of my continued shift away from a constant sharing of what I’m doing and what I’m creating.
As is typical upon the return from any trip is a list of all the things that you learned abroad that you will definitely make part of your daily life…your regular life. Regular life though, can be a fairly dominating beast and life at home is full of norms and routines. Even the best of intentions can have difficulty locating the cracks so the new patterns can find their space. I’m happy to continue that search in the months ahead.
Something that is clear to me now is that my ceramics work is officially on hiatus. That may have been more apparent to you through my writing and conversations than it was to me. It’s always easier to see the pathways for others than it is to for yourself. My storage unit in North Austin holds a full studio ready to come back to life, but I have no immediate plans to reopen my ceramics studio. This hiatus is a very real thing.
I have been asked a lot about what was the biggest thing I learned or what was the most inspiring thing about my time working in my residency once I returned to Austin. I still don’t have an answer. I remain convinced that the most important thing about creating anything is momentum. The thoughts can remain inside my head, or I can bring them to life in the real world. The act of doing the actual thing is what leads to more of that. I’ve always found that more thinking about things creates more thoughts, while more making creates more opportunities to make things. This became even more apparent after I moved out of my studio. I have always had a list of things that I want (or need) to make. Now, for the first time since I can remember that nearly endless list is not the first thing I think about when I wake up. It’s not It’s not what I’m thinking about when I’m doing anything else. That list and the desire to create with clay hasn’t disappeared, but it is not as readily accessible as it has been.
A lot of that momentum has been transferred to my photography.
As I was cleaning and packing up my studio I found a notebook from 2018 which contained a simple phrase, “Find an exit.” This was written at the height of my production, the height of my success, and what felt like an overwhelming demand for my dinnerware that far outweighed my capacity to produce. I knew that I had been looking for change for a long time, but I was astonished to see this sentence from from eight years earlier as I finally was exiting a studio that had been such a huge part of my world for so long.
My friend, Miranda Bennett, wrote beautifully about something similar in a recent post on her lovely Substack, Creativity in the time of Capitalism.
I have been worried for months that once I left my studio I would find myself wandering aimlessly or perhaps worse, finding myself with nothing to do. A little more than a month out from my move, I am no longer concerned about that.
I recently updated my website a bit to reflect the new reality of my creative world. This new version separates, a little more clearly, my ceramics and my photography.
Speaking of photography…below is a small, random gallery of some of my recent work from January and February.
More coming soon…because I continue to believe in the momentum of things.
Nice to hear from you here, Keith!