I Do Not Recommend Putting Gold Luster on Your Ceramic Sculpture

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I Do Not Recommend Putting Gold Luster on Your Ceramic Sculpture

I do not recommend putting gold luster on your ceramic sculpture during a wildly uncontrollable pit fire, fueled with oak branches fallen from the children of the mother oak that sits in your backyard, melting the pig’s hair of the brush and turning it black in the smokey flame.

I do not recommend you wear gloves and whisper to your form and the voices inside it.

I do not recommend you pour iron saturated water from a plastic container that you’ve been using to corrode all the metal trash that has bioturbated from your soil over the past year, another life of nails and beer bottle caps, nurturing iron loving bacteria.

I do not recommend you add datura flowers and seed pods from the night portion of your garden, the garden you keep to ward off outside negative interference, and I do not recommend you stand upwind from the smoke, which is toxic and protects your sculpture from jealous eyes and covetous gestures.

I do not recommend that you add a pinch of salt to your fire, to cleanse the smoke and clear whatever gathering of spirits your studio magick has managed to conjure up and the influence they can have on your work and its future steward.

I do not recommend you heat your sculpture for several hours, adding gathered branch after gathering branch until your sculpture is sitting in a thick bed of coals, before applying your gold luster to your form in the heat of your fire.

I do not recommend that you add pine cones to your fire and get sudden heat spikes that cause your form to sound off in that peculiar ceramics way, tink.

I do not recommend that you add lichen encrusted branches the color of celadon to the get most copper in the wood ash you most assuredly should not save from your pit fires, in which to process ash glazes that provide your pots with the most delicious pistachio greens, and I do not recommend that you chase a number of clays to figure out which one works best for this process.

I do not recommend you heat your earthenware sculpture with its vitreous engobe surface to between 1250/1300 degrees Fahrenheit to get just the right dirty gold luster in the eyes of your emissary.

I do not recommend that in the making and the finish of your sculpture you send love to all the beings, and especially the small wild rabbit who tells the mare in a long wide circle that the deer have arrived to graze on her pasture, and the desiccated dead dog lying uncared for on the hot asphalt at the end of the dead end road where humans dump their waste oil and chemicals, the silent humans watching each other on their devices, alone, the young woman with the bag of pens and her open laptop and a sketchbook open before her jotting quiet observations while folk music covers plays sweetly and Houston coastal clouds march lazily behind.

I do not recommend putting a bowl filled with collected sargassum in your sagger on the coals of your pit fire, so the hydrogen sulfide fumes of the rotting vegetation can gently bath your sculpture and slowly turn to ash that can be saved and used for another rabbit sculpture.

I do not recommend you use compassion through your making on the grackles singing to the warm day and building nests in high places and the young woman slightly tired and at the end of a long shift, minding the quiet space of her life with grace and dignity, a small purpose writ large in the gentle fabric of the universe.

I do not recommend that as your sculpture cools, you gaze lovingly at the woman sitting across from you, dressed in emerald green, the same color as the snake on your sculpture, and I do not recommend that you tell her you love her, sharing the remainder of the days gifted to you to stand within her radiant presence.

I do not recommend that you think about iron and clay, and the heritage of iron that the iron people carry and how they transformed this land from the way that the old keepers maintained.

I do not recommend thinking about your sculpture as a pathway to redemption from the practice of iron, and I do not recommend that you cite and thank with gratitude and love Heidi Gustafsson for her insightful book on earth materials and her sacred path as an ochre keeper.

I do not recommend that you consider clay as a pathway for connection not performance and viability and commerce.

I do not recommend that you thank your sculptural presence as an underworld transmission, given to you to acknowledge and receive, with gratitude and love.