50 Pounds of Clay
On last week’s podcast ‘Observe the Jellyfish,’ Tony and I talked about some principles for re-entry as we all navigate easing back into the world after the strict quarantine of the past four months.
Today, I want to focus a bit more on the principle that I referenced from the book ‘Art and Fear’ by David Bayles and Ted Orland that Tony named ’50 Pounds of Clay.’ I’ll share the story again here - this time directly from the book:
“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”
It just so happens that I am working on the last few days of the 100 Day Project and feel like I have slogged through my own 50 pounds of clay. As I knead and shape these last few pieces, I wanted to reflect on a few things that I’ve been pondering these past several days.
When I first did the 100 Day Project in 2019, the aspect of posting each piece to Instagram was a very useful motivator; fuel for my art engine, as it were. I always have wished I was more internally driven, but over my 48 years of life, I have determined that I am, at the core, externally motivated. If I think about doing something but never tell anyone, the odds are high that it will never materialize. If I tell friends that I am planning to accomplish something, you can pretty much guarantee I will follow through. I don’t exactly know if it’s my desire to impress - the pride/ego that’s moving me forward, but honestly, I haven’t worried too terribly much about analyzing the carrot when the outcome has been… well… satisfying.
in April, I decided to collaborate with my friend Christian for this year’s 100 Day Project, illustrating her pieces inspired by one word. Last year, I painted ordinary objects and had complete control over what my subject matter was. This year, although Christian gave me no specific parameters, I had tasked myself to create a response to her words. I felt a sense of responsibility, both literally and figuratively, to draw something out of her words, in contrast to just digging around in my kitchen drawer to find something with an interesting shape or texture.
When I started this year, I didn’t even consider not posting my art on Instagram as I considered this very much a part of the process - at least for externally motivated me. I realized a little than more half-way through, however, that there were ideas I was contemplating, styles I wanted to try, that were not necessarily '‘me’ - or at least what I perceived as being ‘my style.’ This resulted in finding myself in a box of sorts - one of my own making.
As I think more about it, I’ve been building this box for the past few years; restricting myself to what I thought I should be making, rather than just making. I was engaging in the ‘quantity’ aspect of our clay story, but somehow, I had intertwined a twisted self- induced ‘quality’ into the process, or at least how I perceived my Instagram followers would view ‘quality.’ If I wanted to try something different, or new, or dare I say ‘not my style’ then I became anxious that my perceived audience of followers would judge my work as a failure.
In this case, my fragile ego wasn’t serving me in any way; it was effectively and actively drowning my creative spirit. My aversion to failure has stopped me from trying new things my whole life. I grew up hearing that if you can’t be the best at something, there ‘s no use even trying. As you can imagine, this attitude crushed any of my fledgling attempts to ‘work’ at something. There was never time to work the 50 pounds of clay when you were expected to perform immediately, carrying the burden of crafting the perfect pot right out of the pottery gate.
As I try to excise this resistance and in effect, wrestle my reactive ego to the ground, taking my art process off Instagram seemed like the best first step in stepping out of my proverbial art box. I want to put energy into fostering the part of me that tries new things; the part of me that is more invested in expanding and moving and growing than staying comfortable; the part of me that makes mistakes and isn’t worried about the shape of my pot as I knead and shape and scrape the clay out from under my fingernails.
