The other day I was talking to some new students at the studio; we were discussing the parts of pottery they didn’t like doing.  They all loved throwing the initial piece but didn’t like throwing lids or pulling handles or even glazing the piece.  I’ve felt the same way.  The other tasks were not as much fun as taking a lump of clay and creating something beautiful from it.  But I wasn’t good at handles or lids and sometimes I couldn’t figure out what to do with the glazes to make the pot look good.  So instead of resisting I risked improving my skills in these areas.  I threw a bunch of mugs so I was forced to pull handles, I thought about glaze ideas before I threw the pot so I was excited about the glazing as much as the piece.  I learned new ways to make lids that turned out to be easier and nicer looking!

By taking the risk of doing something I didn’t like doing I learned that I could get good at it and now enjoy doing it.  I think this can be applied to many things in life.  Ok, I know that spending more time sitting in traffic is not going to make me like doing that but with things that I have more control over doing if I could try doing them better or differently (maybe take a different route to avoid the traffic?) I might finally enjoy doing them.

Emergence Tea Pot

This tea pot is the result of taking the risk of doing what I didn’t like doing; to read more about this piece and it’s inspiration please visit my blog at: FutureRelicsGallery.com

Thanks

Lori Buff is a successful artist and website designer from East Atlanta Village where she lives with her partner and three dogs. Lori enjoys working in the garden, riding motorcycles and doing volunteer work but when she's not busy running around, she can be found engrossed in a good book.
Email this author | All posts by Lori Buff