Back In the Saddle Again . . .

Or How the New Normal Is Just Like the Old Normal . . . Almost.

It’s so good to be back in the studio with regularity. Not that I’m in there daily, but certainly enough to feel like I’m in a bit of a flow. I’ve adjusted my chair so that I’m not constantly looking down as I’m working at the table (what the docs thought might be the reason for my herniated disc – that repetitive downward bending motion). And I try and take breaks to stay loose, walk around, visit my other artist friends who have studios just down the hall.

My MO when I try to start up the creative engine is to get out the clay, pull a small piece out of the 25 lb block in the bag and begin to pinch. I can’t tell you what it does actually, this methodical pinching, this pressing evenly around the wall, then a soft sliding of the thumb up the inside, pulling a bit more of the clay to the lip of the bowl which is being made slowly, ever so slowly, and then beginning another round of pinching.

A palm full of clay

Beginning to pinch

Starting to form the walls

Thinning begins by mostly pinching

It’s like a zen meditation. 

Pinch, pinch, pinch, pinch...pull.    Pinch, pinch, pinch, pinch...pull.

Pulling on the inside brings walls up

I used to be very careful to smooth both the inside and the outside of these pinch pots as I went along. And when they got leather hard, I might carve into the smooth outside walls, leaving an evocative linear pattern.

Nowadays, I push out on the clay wall from the inside, which then makes a randomly cracked surface on the outside. I’m beginning to like this randomness. A lot.

Smooth and scrape the inside.

Push to get the cracks to form on the outside.

There is something very visceral about doing this work. Getting the walls as thin as possible without breaking through. Seeing the cracks form. Scraping the insides to almost thrown smoothness. I let go of any preconceived thoughts about what I “should be” making and just go with the pinch pot where it takes me.

Sometimes I bite off a bit more than I can chew when I’ve started a pinch pot with a wedge of clay larger than a small palm full. Then I actually have to stop before the walls start to collapse. I have to turn the pot upside down on its still even and a bit wide lip so it can dry out just a tad, usually just overnight covered lightly with plastic – not at all to leather hard but rather still pinchable, still where I can pull up a bit on the sides and so forth. But doing these large pinch pots can be a delicate proposition. Too soft and you can’t keep the shape. Too hard and you can’t change the shape.

There is something philosophical in that last statement if you ponder it for a bit. Something about the fine balance we have to find in life (and the patience we must muster) in order for things not to collapse around us.

That’s why, when I’ve successfully finished a large pinch pot, I feel so self congratulatory. I’ve DONE it! Whoo whoo!

One of my larger pinch pots 

Meanwhile, my good friend and young, talented playwright, Jennifer visited me in the studio last week, wanting to “pick my brain” about being a potter for a character in her new play, “Finding Alice”. I was happy to oblige. We talked about a variety of issues for those of us working in clay. As we talked I pinched, of course. And then, as I picked up certain tools, she had the temerity to ask me their names! I mean REALLY?? OK, let’s see. This is a . . . a . . . scraping tool. This is a wire cutter. This is a . . . I use it for trimming so . . .right, it’s a trimming tool. Oh and the scraping tool? – no, it’s called a rib. Whew! It’s embarrassing when you’ve been doing something for years and can’t remember the proper names of the tools you use every day.

My everyday tools

Anyway, as we were winding down the interview, I asked Jennifer if she would like to see me throw something on the wheel. Of course, I asked this without thinking. I hadn’t been on the wheel for what was it – a couple of years? I wrote about envisioning this as I was recuperating from the herniated disc in June 2010 (Viewing Life Through My Mind's Eye . .) when I felt I might never “get back to normal” or that, inevitably, there would be a “new normal”. This is what I wrote:

Wedged clay slapped on the bat ready to throw

“…I see myself effortlessly wedging clay into conical shapes. I take one and slap onto the center of the wheel. With wet hands and a water-filled sponge held lightly in the right, I bend over and with my elbows pressed down onto my thighs for stability, I put all the weight of my upper body into my arms and hands which are cupped around the clay as the wheel turns at top speed.  Very soon, I pressure this lump of clay into the beginnings of one of my lovingly crafted vessels.”

And just as I envisioned it then, I got on the wheel, and in a few minutes, had fashioned this vessel.

Thrown piece - first in almost 2 years

I’ve gone back to reshape it a bit and plan to do some other things to it. But more than just being a vessel thrown as an example, for me it now stands as a testament to my body’s resilience.

When I look at it I am reminded that I am back to my old self. Well, no, not really my old self.

I’m back to my new self. Each and every day is a “new normal” and for that, how can I be anything but eternally grateful?

As Rosanna Rosanna Danna used to say . . .

It's Always Something.

You go in to get an MRI for pain in your lower back, worrying it’s something more serious than arthritis – another disc problem, a fractured vertebrae - and you find out there’s something else, something possibly even more serious than you ever imagined.

“Enlarged lymph nodes in the retroperitoneal area.” That’s what my doctor told me over the phone last night. I shouldn’t worry that this has anything to do with my previous stage one breast cancer. But I need a CT scan, a scan, which in her words “carries a significant amount of radiation.”

My doctor, Dr. S., is very conservative. She hesitates to order tests unless she is absolutely sure they are necessary. I’ve had this lower back pain for almost two years. With my original complaint she smiled and told me this is a product of aging, recommended I take ibuprofen when necessary and sent me to a physical therapist.

Then the disc in the upper thoracic neck area ruptured and I spent a couple of months on morphine and medical marijuana, masking any pain in my lower back as a bonus. Now I am blessedly free of pain from the ruptured disc, and off all the heavy-duty medications. But right on cue, the lower back pain has returned.

At my yearly check up a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned I still have significant lower back pain so my doctor scheduled an MRI to see what’s going on. The result came back – severe arthritis. This wasn’t news as the x-ray I had last year picked that up.

But then, the shocker: Enlarged lymph nodes in the retroperitoneal area. I go in for the CT scan this Sunday.

Rosanna was never more right.

I wrote this over two months ago,  I was thinking about posting it and then just became overwhelmed by what was happening to me or rather by the medical conveyer belt onto which I found myself inextricably thrown.

In the past two months there have been visits to Dr. K., the oncologist, extensive blood work, a lymph node biopsy and in between, blessedly, a trip to Europe, which had been planned for over a year to visit friends and family celebrating my brother-in-law’s 60^th birthday.  For those two weeks I was able to move fear out of my mind and focus on the moments of beauty in Vienna, the joyful reconnections in Berlin and in the back of my mind, hold onto the hope that these large lymph nodes were just remnants of a past infection from my days living in Africa.

Or . . .? 

But hopes and wishes rarely make correct diagnoses. This week I learned I have small lymphocytic leukemia and/or chronic lymphocytic lymphoma. The gist is I have lymphoma, cancer of the lymph system. That’s the bad news.

The good news is the pathologist used the word “indolent” – lazy, in no big hurry to do away with me just yet. And for now the only real symptoms I’m experiencing are being unusually tired (who my age isn’t?) and a whole new surge of what I’m calling ‘hot flashes’ – which may or may not be attributed to the node business. But I am, after all, years beyond those hormonal flashes, which we ladies of a certain age all endured to one degree or another. Whatever is causing them, they’re back.

Today I go in for my second CT scan, which will be used to stage my particular cancer. In December, Dr. K. will do a bone marrow biopsy to finish the staging.

In the meantime, I am working on platters in the studio.

Getting the wedged clay ready to roll into slabs.

Slab put on my makeshift 'mold'.

Platter with coiled handles drying into leather hard.

This is, after all, supposed to be about my life as an artist, not just my life as a patient.

But then, life has a way of drifting out of the lane just when you're sure you're driving straight ahead. No matter how firm a grip I thought I had on the steering wheel, this journey has just taken an unexpected turn.

And so the blog morphs into “my life as an artist who is, a once again, a cancer patient.”


Never more true, Rosanna. It's always something.

An Invitation to 'Cop a Feel' . . .

For me, one of the benefits of working in clay is the wide range of tactile experiences it allows, from squeezing soft butter-like porcelain between your figures when you take it right out of the bag, to forming it as it begins to harden but is still malleable, to carving it when it’s already ‘leather hard’ and still keeps its shape. There’s a point when it’s been carved, is leather hard but hasn’t yet been bisque fired when it’s so fine to just take the piece in your hands and ‘cop a feel.’ Since it still has some residual moisture in the body of the clay, it’s almost always cool to the touch. And so very smooth. And if you have sensitive fingertips, you can feel the slightly raised, almost imperceptible ripples from the carving. Yes, I’ll admit it’s a very sensual pleasure.

So when I mentioned to Scarlett that she might like to ‘cop a feel’ of the piece I’m working on for her, she didn’t hesitate. She and her partner, Marilyn, came by the studio to do just that. To be perfectly honest, this is the first time I’ve ever issued an invitation to ‘cop a feel.’ And to be perfectly honest, Scarlett and Marilyn were the perfect ‘feelers.’

The piece has been bisque fired so it didn’t have the coolness that a greenware piece would. But what makes feeling it ‘naked’ or without any glaze so special is just that – it’s naked. It is just the clay, its form and only its form – the wall and the void that the wall describes – is what’s you have. There is nothing to distract you from the delicate feel of the wall of the bowl, how it gently curves, how it comes up and greets the first of the coils, which sit so unconsciously on its rim and then moves on upward, unevenly to the ragged edged lip. There is no color – no shiny texture – to disturb the immediacy of the form’s beauty.

I remember an instructor once saying to me that if the piece I’d thrown didn’t have ‘life’ right off the wheel, no matter with what or how I glazed it, the surface treatment wouldn’t breathe life into that piece. I spend a lot of time carving and ‘altering’ the pieces I throw. But I understand this statement. I think it’s why I tend not to glaze the outside walls of my work these days – I want the clay to stand for itself – it’s unglazed, inherently beautiful self.

I think Marilyn and Scarlett both enjoyed having an intimate ‘feel’ of their piece in its naked glory. It was Scarlett who said, “There’s something musical in touching this. It’s so delicate, so fragile . . .” And then there were no more words, just hands taking in the wall and the void the wall described as a sightless person might.

Tomorrow, it will be glazed inside with Oasis Blue chosen by Scarlett and this piece of porcelain will be transformed once again. I hope it will still hold its unglazed, ‘cop a feel’ appeal.