As I’m sure you’ve uncovered from my letters by now, the pottery making process is a constant reminder that slow and steady provides the most beautiful harvests. It is a remarkably unhurried process and I work exceedingly hard to appreciate sauntering it’s winding paths instead of wallowing in it’s frustrations. My most important tool for this is patience.
When I was little, my family would read a children’s book that was filled with virtues. I’m sure it was overflowing with important themes that are likely embedded in my psyche and for that I am grateful, but the only one I remember is patience. I can recall specific moments in my childhood and throughout my teenage years and twenties and now present time (like when I was cut off in traffic on the way home from the beach yesterday) that I find myself silently repeating:
One place that patience is not only a virtue, but is a necessity to bring forth a bounty, is in the pottery studio. Each stage of the process takes its sweet time, and cannot be hurried or bent to the needs of capitalistic pressures. Every moment in the process is wholly necessary to get to the next, whether it’s ensuring a clay blob is centered on the wheel or a drying that feels particularly slow going or a lesson learned from a test tile (like the lilac underglaze that I discovered can barely be seen on a deep brown clay). Instead of thinking ‘how frustrating!!!!’ I flip it and think to myself:
Each step, happening in its own time, unfolding to create something special and unique and charming. I try think of my own path much the same way. Each step I take, each lesson I glean, no matter how disheartening in the moment, is necessary to reach the enigmatic place I’m working toward. The place that will unfold only from my meanderings, my learnings, my slowly gained wisdom.
May you garner the patience to see the beauty in the process and know that your path, however winding it may feel, is the only one that will get you where you’re going. And that place, no matter how hazy it appears at this moment, will be lovely and wholly yours.
I made something new and fun and am selling it on instagram today!!! Find it in my stories here.
Just for fun as a thank you for being here, 20% off my whole shop for my sweet subscribers this week - use the code thankyouforbeinghere !!!
If you live in NYC, I’m going to be selling my pottery in real life for the first time on Governor’s Island!!! You can find me there Saturday 7/23 and Sunday 7/24. I’m so excited!!
I just added some checkered toothbrush holders to my webshop, if you’re looking for a unique gift or something special for your own bathroom (these are AMAZING for traveling too - perfect to throw in your dopp kit and keep your toothbrush off hotel bathroom counters that somehow always seem to be wet??)
thank you thank you thank you for being here xooxoxox