Pottery Art Quotes

I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.

I have come more and more to the belief that we owe our arts a thousand times what we are paying them. We support our cigarette factories, soap manufacturers, beauticians, all the luxury and pleasure businesses of our over-indulged civilization, but we pay our painters an average wage... and yet when the future digs us from the past they won't care how we smell, what we smoke, or if we bathed. All they’ll know of us will be our architecture, our paintings, sculpture, poems, laws, philosophy, drama, our pottery and fabrics, the things which our hands made and our minds thought up - oh, the machines they’ll dig up too, but perhaps they’ll point to them as our destruction, the wheels that drove us down to death.

In practicing the Japanese art of Kintsukuroi, one repairs broken pottery by filling in the cracks with gold, silver, or platinum. The choice to highlight the breaks with precious metals not only acknowledges them, but also pays tribute to the vessel that has been torn apart by the mutability of life. The previously broken object is considered more beautiful for its imperfections. In life, too, even greater brilliance can be found after mending.

She loved the smell of wet dirt the way others might love the smell of roses.

There is really only one way to restore a world that is dying and in disrepair: to make beauty where ugliness has set in. By beauty, I don’t mean a superficial attractiveness, though the word is commonly used in this way. Beauty is a loveliness admired in its entirety, not just at face value. The beauty I’m referring to is metabolized grief. It includes brokenness and fallibility, and in so doing, conveys for us something deliciously real. Like kintsukuroi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with powdered gold, what is normally seen as a fatal flaw is distinguished with value. When we come into contact with this kind of beauty, it serves as a medicine for the brokenness in ourselves, which then gives us the courage to live in greater intimacy with the world’s wounds.

...failure with clay was more complete and more spectacular than with other forms of art. You are subject to the elements... Any one of the old four - earth, air, fire, water - can betray you and melt, or burst, or shatter - months of work into dust and ashes and spitting steam. You need to be a precise scientist, and you need to know how to play with what chance will do to your lovingly constructed surfaces in the heat of the kiln.

The Fae book was definitely filled with the same stories as hers, but this one was filled with picture after picture of Jared. She couldn’t help but flip backward a few pages and see magical images come to life: of Jared defending her in an alley. Sitting in art class with Mina, spinning on the pottery wheel. There was another one of Jared by the lake, teaching her to fight. Jared and her in the storage room, laughing, before their tickling fight. She flipped forward and saw the last page filled with a motion-captured image of Jared and her sharing a kiss.

Kintsugi is a Japanese art, that takes broken pottery and delicately places it back together by sealing the cracks with gold lacquer. I found myself admiring the metaphor it represents. It reminded me of you. Maybe you feel like you are broken inside, maybe you’re worried that you will disappoint me. Just like this pottery, life will never be perfect, but it can be beautiful. But we have to choose to see the beauty of it, not despite it’s cracks or imperfections but because of it. I get that you may not want to show me the side of you that’s less than perfect, but don’t you see? I don’t want perfect. Perfect is overrated. All I want is you. All that you are. Exactly as you are. I want you to know that I will wait for you, for as long as it takes. Take your time. (but not too long)

E Concrematio. Confirmatio--out ot the fire comes firmness, through stress we pass to strength.

Because while a book, a painting, a song, a piece of pottery, a tree can outlive us, none of those things will exist forever. But love is an energy. It's infinite.

In Japanese pottery, there’s an artful form of repair called kintsugi. When a piece of ceramic pottery breaks, rather than trying to restore it to its original condition, the artisan accentuates the fault by using gold to fill the crack. This beautifully draws attention to where the work was broken, creating a golden vein. Instead of the flaw diminishing the work, it becomes a focal point, an area of both physical and aesthetic strength. The scar also tells the story of the piece, chronicling its past experience.

It was state of the art, he said. The art in this case was probably pottery.

Most striking about the traditional societies of the Congo was their remarkable artwork: baskets, mats, pottery, copper and ironwork, and, above all, woodcarving. It would be two decades before Europeans really noticed this art. Its discovery then had a strong influence on Braque, Matisse, and Picasso -- who subsequently kept African art objects in his studio until his death. Cubism was new only for Europeans, for it was partly inspired by specific pieces of African art, some of them from the Pende and Songye peoples, who live in the basin of the Kasai River, one of the Congo's major tributaries. It was easy to see the distinctive brilliance that so entranced Picasso and his colleagues at their first encounter with this art at an exhibit in Paris in 1907. In these central African sculptures some body parts are exaggerated, some shrunken; eyes project, cheeks sink, mouths disappear, torsos become elongated; eye sockets expand to cover almost the entire face; the human face and figure are broken apart and formed again in new ways and proportions that had previously lain beyond sight of traditional European realism. The art sprang from cultures that had, among other things, a looser sense than Islam or Christianity of the boundaries between our world and the next, as well as those between the world of humans and the world of beasts. Among the Bolia people of the Congo, for example, a king was chosen by a council of elders; by ancestors, who appeared to him in a dream; and finally by wild animals, who signaled their assent by roaring during a night when the royal candidate was left at a particular spot in the rain forest. Perhaps it was the fluidity of these boundaries that granted central Africa's artists a freedom those in Europe had not yet discovered.

Most striking about the traditional societies of the Congo was their remarkable artwork: baskets, mats, pottery, copper and ironwork, and above all, woodcarving. It would be two decades before Europeans really noticed this art. Its discovery then had a strong influence on Braque, Matisse, and Picasso.

The Japanese art form of kintsugi repairs broken and flawed pottery with gold, silver or platinum. It doesn’t hide the cracks, but embraces it, seeing it as integral to the object’s history, and rebuilds something new.

Forever, Tom thought. Maybe he’d never go back to the States. It was not so much Europe itself as the evenings he had spent alone, here and in Rome, that made him feel that way. Evenings by himself simply looking at maps, or lying around on sofas thumbing through guidebooks. Evenings looking at his clothes - his clothes and Dickie’s - and feeling Dickie’s rings between his palms, and running his fingers over the antelope suitcase he had bought at Gucci’s. He had polished the suitcase with a special English leather dressing, not that it needed polishing because he took such good care of it, but for its protection. He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with. They gave a man self-respect. Not ostentation but quality, and the love that cherished the quality. Possessions reminded him that he existed, and made him enjoy his existence. It was as simple as that. And wasn’t that worth something? He existed. Not many people in the world knew how to, even if they had the money. It really didn’t take money, masses of money, it took a certain security. He had been on the road to it, even with Marc Priminger. He had appreciated Marc’s possessions, and they were what had attracted him to the house, but they were not his own, and it had been impossible to make a beginning at acquiring anything of his own on forty dollars a week. It would have taken him the best years of his life, even if he had economised stringently, to buy the things he wanted. Dickie’s money had given him only an added momentum on the road he had been travelling. The money gave him the leisure to see Greece, to collect Etruscan pottery if he wanted (he had recently read an interesting book on that subject by an American living in Rome), to join art societies if he cared to and to donate to their work. It gave him the leisure, for instance, to read his Malraux tonight as late as he pleased, because he did not have to go to a job in the morning. He had just bought a two-volume edition of Malraux’s Psychologic de I’art which he was now reading, with great pleasure, in French with the aid of a dictionary.

The stream and the broken pottery: what was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself,—life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose? The Indian women had held it in their jars. In the sculpture she had seen in the Art Institute, it had been caught in a flash of arrested motion. In singing, one made a vessel of one's throat and nostrils and held it on one's breath, caught the stream in a scale of natural intervals. IV

Kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of repairing pottery by mending it with gold. Within our imperfections and our flaws lies the potential for beauty and strength. Once the broken pieces are put back together, we are sturdier and more beautiful than we were before the damage was inflicted.

New York had pushed and bent and bullied, driving me underground to sort out the madness and sculpt my Being with my own hands in self-discovery on its cold pottery wheel and in the white heat of its kiln. The City enabled me to learn who I really was, as a pixelated man and member of Humanity.

I realised that I had become too introverted. When you are the person everyone comes to in an isolated area, you have no-one to discuss things with. It's good up to a point but dreadful in a way. You simply have to have the corners rubbed off you and have criticism that's pretty cruel if you are to toe the line.

Knowledge is addictive. Keep it up.

I know where I am going now with art. I have found myself. Yvonne Rust 1994, aged 72.

Later in life the force of abstinence was to really be understood and my parent's problems became very clear. When will man appreciate his pleasures and respect them enough to indulge in moderation?

In Japanese culture there is an art of fixing broken pottery with gold or silver lacquer. The lacquer highlights the pottery’s flaw as a celebrated part of its history. Because the piece has been salvaged and repaired, pulled back from the edge of destruction, it is considered even more beautiful for having been broken. We’d been broken. And then we’d been pieced back together. The turmoil had been meaningful because now there was gold where the cracks used to be.

Some people have suggested that Mirabelle will lose touch with her birth culture,” the producer said. “How do you respond to those concerns?” Mrs. McCullough nodded. “We’re trying to be very sensitive to that,” she said. “You’ll notice that we’re adding more and more Asian art to our walls.” She waved a hand at the scrolls with ink-brushed mountains that hung by the fireplace, the glazed pottery horse on the mantel. “We’re committed, as she gets older, to teaching her about her birth culture. And of course she already loves the rice. Actually, it was her first solid food.

I have never found a solo life is devastated.At times it is lonely.It is a selfish life doing only the things you want to do. That is what the general public are jealous of but are not prepared to take the loneliness to reap the excitement that only solos can accept without having to consider others.

The figure, made by the woman standing in front of him, had not been manufactured by modifying—carving or shaping or polishing—a material that occurred naturally. It was made of ceramic, fired clay, and it was the first material ever created by human hand and human intelligence. The heating chamber was not a cooking oven, it was a kiln. And the first kiln ever devised was not invented for the purpose of making useful waterproof containers. Long before pottery, small ceramic sculptures were fired into impermeable hardness. The figures they had seen on the shelves resembled animals and humans, but the images of women—no men were made, only women—and other living creatures were not considered actual portrayals. They were symbols, metaphors, meant to represent more than they showed, to suggest an analogy, a spiritual similarity. They were art; art came before utility.

On Claud, though, the look is very cool.) For example, today she was wearing a neon green tank top under a white oversized man’s shirt and fuschia pink stirrup pants. The shirt was rolled at the sleeves and belted with a colorful woven belt. Claud finished the outfit with dangly ceramic-bead earrings she’d made herself in pottery class. She’s super artistic. She paints, sketches, draws, sculpts. You name it! Besides art and cool clothing, Claudia loves junk food. Her parents disapprove of Ho-Ho’s and Twinkies and stuff like that, so she hides them all over her room. You never know when you’re going to pick up a pillow and find a bag of potato chips or something behind it. The other thing she stashes away are her Nancy Drew books. Her parents don’t approve of those, either. They don’t think the mysteries are “intellectual” enough. Claudia couldn’t care less if the books are “intellectual.” One thing Claud is not interested in is school work. Although she can’t spell for anything, she’s definitely not dumb. She just doesn’t like school. And, unfortunately, her grades show it. She’s the complete

In my small way I became an integral part of the pottery movement, and added fuel to the fire which consumed New Zealand and and swept pottery to the forefront of the of the fifties and sixties.

The bookcase held only books and CDs that he loved, and a shelf, now virtually empty, held a pottery ornament my younger sister had made in high school and figurines of a jazz band that he had bought by mail order.

There is a Japanese art called kintsukuroi. Each time a piece of pottery cracks, it is lacquered back together with gold. All those golden threads make the piece what it is, extraordinary. I like to think of my heart like that. That each time it breaks, it gets more valuable and beautiful with the mending. It is a collage of gold.

The large bedroom was crammed to overflowing with family relics, and examples of the various arts in which Lady Emily had brilliantly dabbled at one time or another. Part of one wall was decorated with a romantic landscape painted on the plaster, the fourpost bed was hung with her own skilful embroidery, watercolour drawings in which a touch of genius fought and worsted an entire want of technique hung on the walls. Pottery, woodcarving, enamels, all bore witness to their owner’s insatiable desire to create. From their earliest days the Leslie children had thought of their mother as doing or making something, handling brush, pencil, needle with equal enthusiasm, coming in late to lunch with clay in her hair, devastating the drawing-room with her far-flung painting materials, taking cumbersome pieces of embroidery on picnics, disgracing everyone by a determination to paint the village cricket pavilion with scenes from the life of St Francis for which she made the gardeners pose. What Mr Leslie thought no one actually knew, for Mr Leslie had his own ways of life and rarely interfered. Once only had he been known to make a protest. In the fever of an enamelling craze, Lady Emily had a furnace put up in the service-room, thus making it extremely difficult for Gudgeon and the footman to get past, and moreover pressing the footman as her assistant when he should have been laying lunch.

It is no wonder that historians trace the birth of Western civilization to these jewels of the Aegean, Ionian, and Mediterranean seas. The Greek Isles are home to wide-ranging and far-reaching cultural traditions and mythic tales, not to mention the colorful history and unforgettable vistas that still draw thousands of tourists to the region every year. Minoan ruins stand alongside Byzantine churches and Crusader fortresses. Terra-cotta pots spilling over with hibiscus flowers adorn blinding-white stucco houses that reflect the sun’s dazzling light. Fishing villages perched upon craggy cliffs overlook clusters of colorful boats in island harbors. Centuries-old citrus and olive groves dot the hillsides. Lush vegetation and rocky shores meet isolated stretches of sand and an azure sea. Masts bob left and right on sailboats moored in secluded inlets. Each island is a world unto itself. Although outsiders and neighbors have inhabited, visited, and invaded these islands throughout the centuries, the islands’ rugged geography and small size have also ensured a certain isolation. In this environment, traditional ways of life thrive. The arts--pottery, glass blowing, gem carving, sculpture, and painting, among others--flourish here today, as contemporary craft artists keep alive techniques begun in antiquity. In the remote hilltop villages of Kárpathos, for example, artisans practice crafts that date back eons, and inhabitants speak a dialect close to ancient Greek. Today, to walk along the pebbled pathways of a traditional Greek mountain village or the marbled streets of an ancient acropolis is to step back in time. To meander at a leisurely pace through these island chains by boat is to be captivated by the same dramatic landscapes and enchanted islets that make the myths of ancient Greece so compelling. To witness the Mediterranean sun setting on the turquoise sea is to receive one of life’s greatest blessings.

The mythical Thunderbird, in one form or another, was held in awe by practically all of the Indian tribes. On the Great Plains, where the phenomena of thunderstorms was very striking, the Thunderbird was supposed to be a deity in the form of a bird of enormous size, which produced thunder by flapping its wings, and lightning by opening and closing its eyes. These great birds were thought to carry a lake of fresh water on their backs, which caused a great downpour when they flew through the air. Tribes of the Pacific Coast thought the Thunderbird caught whales during a thunderstorm and used its wings as a bow to shoot arrows. Each tribe interpreted the bird differently in its art, as shown on these two pages. The design of the Thunderbird was used to decorate war drums, pottery, and walls and was supposed to protect individuals and tribes from the Evil Spirits.

The material is not the sign of the creative feeling for life: of the warmth and sympathy and reverence which foster being; techniques are not the sign; “art” is not the sign. The sign is the light that dwells within the act, whatever its nature or its medium.

This book is designed to strengthen your faith and give you another angle from which to view your relationship with God.

The clay doesn't know what temperature it needs to be fired to; that is the potter's job. We don't know what kinds of trials we need to undergo to become the person God wants us to be, but He does!

Creativity doesn't stop when we get that one project right, it is ingrained in our lives--inescapable.

Stop taking your creativity for granted, or even worse, forgetting it altogether. You are a child of God! He has given you not only the right to be creative, but also the capacity for creativity!

The purpose of this book is to show the creativity of God and to reveal that He has instilled that same imagination inside you too.

God wanted us to know that He is willing to come meet us where we are, stuck in the mud, and create a new life for us.

We used art as a crutch instead of as a vitamin. we should take a dose of creativity every day! If it makes us more joyful in the experience, then why are we choosing to be joyless?

We live in a fallen world. We make mistakes. Recipes are misleading. Winging it can be dangerous if you don't know how to fly. Whatever the reason, some things just don't turn out for us because we simply aren't God.

We have the freedom to create in a world that God created because He loves us enough to give us the free will - imagination - to create.

That is what I wish for you as you move forward, to remember that God is a peace-loving God.

Have we been worshiping our own creations more than we are praising God for giving us the ability to create?

We did not earn creativity, nor did God forget to give creativity to some of us.

If we thought God's imagination and creativity for earth were astounding, just wait until God creates the New Heaven and New Earth!

I love to envision God as the Master Potter. Even though we mess up, He tells us that He is not giving up on us.

Just like the glazes, everyone is created for a purpose. Just because someone else has different talents than us does not make either of us more important.

Just like the artist chooses the clay, God chose you specifically to do the purpose He has in mind for you.

As God's creation, my job is to point back to Him. I should praise Him for making me instead of complaining to Him about how He chose to make me.

Like the clay on the wheel, we must be willing to change, sometimes drastically, in order to remain centered in Christ.

Similar to the clay on the wheel, if we are not centered in God's truth, we will be "off-centered" Christians.

The potter must do the work, but the clay must be at a soft enough state to be receptive to it.

Centering is not just for the wheel! We must also center our spiritual lives with the ways of the Lord.

You are His work; you are His creation.

In the same way a potter signs her work with a stamp, God signs His masterpieces.

We are only human and clay is only clay.

God has given us such a unique relationship with Him that can be better understood through clay.

Just as how making something for someone else blesses both the giver and receiver, so does praising God.

Even though we may think we are flawed, God has made us each exactly how He designed us.

Ever since living things have existed, they have acknowledged God's might, because He created them.

Remember, God doesn't demand perfection. That is His job.

Using your imagination allows your freedom from this world and gives you the ability to enjoy a glimpse of heaven.

God created His first human being-Adam-from clay! We are made from the earth and connected to it.

My goal is to reveal all the beautifully hidden symbols of God's love through creativity and art making.

If we knowingly choose to hide our God-given talents, then we are not fully honoring God.

God designed each of us to have different creative talents to fill different daily needs.

He gave us these gifts on earth so that we could bless others and spread the Gospel in our own effective ways.

God's artistic signature is visibly hidden inside of every breathing thing on earth.

Like the clay that has been recycled and reclaimed, our lives have the capacity for change spiritually.

I want to guide you on this creative journey to see how our creativity is Spiritually rooted in God. It is a God-given skill that we all can use to praise and glorify Him.

God created everything because of His ultimate power, wisdom, and understanding.

Here was light, and flowers, and colours in profusion. There was a loom in the corner, and baskets of fine, thin thread in bright, bright hues. The woven coverlet on the bed, and the drapings on the open windows were unlike anything I had ever seen, woven in geometric patterns that somehow suggested fields of flowers beneath a blue sky. A wide pottery bowl held floating flowers and a slim silver fingerling swam about the stems and above the bright pebbles that floored it. I tried to imagine the pale cynical Fool in the midst of all this colour and art. I took a step further into the room, and saw something that moved my heart aside in my chest. A baby. That was what I took it for at first, and without thinking, I took the next two steps and knelt beside the basket that cradled it. But it was not a living child, but a doll, crafted with such incredible art that almost I expected to see the small chest move with breath. I reached a hand to the pale, delicate face, but dared not touch it. The curve of the brow, the closed eyelids, the faint rose that suffused the tiny cheeks, even the small hand that rested on top of the coverlets were more perfect that I supposed a made thing could be. Of what delicate clay it had been crafted, I could not guess, nor what hand had inked the tiny eyelashes that curled on the infant’s cheek. The tiny coverlet was embroidered all over with pansies, and the pillow was of satin. I don’t know how long I knelt there, as silent as if it were truly a sleeping babe. But eventually I rose, and backed out of the Fool’s room, and then drew the door silently closed behind me.” - Robin Hobb | Farseer Trilogy Book 1 | Assassin’s Apprentice Chapter Nineteen | Journey

Here was light, and flowers, and colours in profusion. There was a loom in the corner, and baskets of fine, thin thread in bright, bright hues. The woven coverlet on the bed, and the drapings on the open windows were unlike anything I had ever seen, woven in geometric patterns that somehow suggested fields of flowers beneath a blue sky. A wide pottery bowl held floating flowers and a slim silver fingerling swam about the stems and above the bright pebbles that floored it. I tried to imagine the pale cynical Fool in the midst of all this colour and art. I took a step further into the room, and saw something that moved my heart aside in my chest. A baby. That was what I took it for at first, and without thinking, I took the next two steps and knelt beside the basket that cradled it. But it was not a living child, but a doll, crafted with such incredible art that almost I expected to see the small chest move with breath. I reached a hand to the pale, delicate face, but dared not touch it. The curve of the brow, the closed eyelids, the faint rose that suffused the tiny cheeks, even the small hand that rested on top of the coverlets were more perfect that I supposed a made thing could be. Of what delicate clay it had been crafted, I could not guess, nor what hand had inked the tiny eyelashes that curled on the infant’s cheek. The tiny coverlet was embroidered all over with pansies, and the pillow was of satin. I don’t know how long I knelt there, as silent as if it were truly a sleeping babe. But eventually I rose, and backed out of the Fool’s room, and then drew the door silently closed behind me.” - Robin Hobb | Farseer Trilogy Book 1 | Assassin’s Apprentice Chapter Nineteen | Journey

I feel machines can make pots faster and more economical than I, what I strive for in my pots, is to give what the machine cannot, the mark of the human hand.” Donn Buchfinck

The most notable function of Japanese art is to express the melancholy of mortality and the inevitable decay of beauty, to act as the catalyst for the experience of extreme sorrow. The mindfulness is found in every aspect of Japanese culture, in pottery, pop songs, haiku, and even in the way of tea. When it comes to achieving that desired quality of existential desolation in Japanese garden, it's moss that gets the job done.

But it can be affirmed that an aesthetically successful pot is a utensil satisfying life-sustaining needs with an element of its creator’s character ever present. In recognizing this one can see that using pottery is a daily communion and a celebration of life. This spirit is first given freely in the creation of the pot and then again in the daily activities that literally sustain and celebrate life. And

Many of us find comfort and interest in old, familiar things, while others seek inspiration or stimulation in the blatantly new or unconventional.” Charity Davis-Woodard

English potter Michael Cardew speaks incisively of this when he says, “And this is something of a paradox, because, in becoming more skillful and more expert, you think you should be making pots more successfully and more safely, but as soon as you rest content with being safe and successful, your pots begin to be static and begin to be dead. They will only stay alive if they are always being brought to birth dangerously.”5

The Philistines had brought beautiful painted art, sculpture, and pottery to the land of Canaan. The Israelites were still scratching on rocks and using stones for utensils. The Philistines had developed blacksmithing and the new art of forging iron. The Israelites were still using bronze, copper and tin for crude implements and few weapons. The Philistines had iron chariots; the Israelites cowered on foot in the hills and mountains. The Philistines had developed a cosmopolitan culture that traded with the nations of the world, and adopted many ideas and gods into its own. The Israelites still worshipped a primitive invisible demon whose insane jealousy demanded his people avoid contact with other nations. It was a wonder they were having so much trouble overcoming these ignorant, uncouth and uncultured Hebrews.

Pots can create a world of slow time where meaning can be found.” Chris Staley

The pa system has broken down. Society has broken down.

In 1946 there was no money in art, no dealer galleries, no craft shops. After the war we started to teach art in every school for the first time. Our generation played a crucial role. We were the stepping stones towards today's galleries.

When Margot died after a car accident in which my sister was also seriously injured in November 1970, I sat on a hill behind a friend's house in Greymouth trying to get my head around having to identify the body of my university sweetheart. Yvonne was the only one who came with condolences (Paul Caffyn)

I decided I had to find out if it was my scene or not. So I stepped in at the deep end. It leads you to survive or drown. Very often you survive.

Meanwhile the doctor in Kaitaia had made known to the Education Dept the behaviour patterns of the Rusts in Te Hapua. The Dept always interfered in the private lives of teachers. Break up in marriage was not to be tolerated and an intervention of this authority forced the Rusts to report to Parawera School in the Waikato.

February 17 Broken Pieces I am forgotten by them as though I were dead; I have become like broken pottery. But I trust in You, O lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hands.—Psalm 31:12, 14-15a I have a friend who does beautiful work with pieces of broken china and pottery. She gave me a lovely blue and white frame as a gift. She took the china and broke it into small enough pieces to fit the frame. She covered a plain frame with a white mortar and fit the broken pieces of blue and white china around the frame in a way that covered most of the area and filled in the spaces in between with more of the mortar. What a work of art! Not only is it beautiful, but it is custom made to fit my taste and home. But even more beautiful is the note that came with the gift. She wrote: my life has been full of broken pieces. Some of them are a result of my own manipulation and control and some are through no one’s fault, but a result of living in a fallen world. Regardless of what I give the Lord, He takes those pieces and adds them to a beautiful work of art. I hope this constantly reminds you of the Great Planner and Master Creator. We surely can make a mess of our lives, can’t we? But regardless of the mess we’ve made, no matter how fragmented we become, if we offer ourselves to God and trust in Him, He can take all the broken pieces of our life and make them into his work of art. And His work is so beautiful! His plan is custom made for each individual. Our times are in His Hands.

It's very hard to reach people in Greymouth with pottery or any form of art because they're allergic to it. Allergic to it ever since they began really because they've taken from the ground in the mining spirit without making or creating, and therefore anything that is creative they do not understand.

This legend traces back to the sixteenth century, when the Japanese tea ceremony underwent a seismic shift. Immaculate dishes were replaced with chipped bowls. People drank from pottery that was worn and weathered. They called this practice wabi sabi. Wabi sabi is the art of honoring the beauty in imperfection. It’s not about creating intentional imperfections. It’s about accepting that flaws are inevitable—and recognizing that they don’t stop something from becoming sublime. That’s been a dominant theme in Tadao Ando’s architecture and his life. He’s an imperfectionist: he’s selective about what he decides to do well.

kintsukuroi, or the “golden repair” of something treasured or important that has become cracked or broken. When applied to the repair of ancient and valuable pieces of pottery, the practice becomes kintsugi, or “golden joinery.” The key to this imaginative art appears when the glue used to fill the cracks and join the broken pieces becomes blended with actual gold. After the repairs have been made, the broken vessel becomes more valuable than ever. Metaphorically, kintsugi suggests that

In practicing the Japanese art of Kintsukuroi, one repairs broken pottery by filling in the cracks with gold, silver, or platinum. The choice to highlight the breaks with precious metals not only acknowledges them, but also pays tribute to the vessel that has been torn apart by the mutability of life. The previously broken object is considered more beautiful for its imperfections. In life, too, even greater brilliance can be found after the mending.

Kathy: Does it hurt a lot, getting a tattoo? Stephanie: Are you thinking about it? Kathy: Sort of. Stephanie: What would you get? Kathy: I don’t know, something symbolic. What does yours symbolize? Stephanie: Well, the image comes from a piece of Minoan pottery that was made on Crete during the Bronze Age. The Minoans had this beautiful way of representing sea life that I fell in love with in my college art history class, and I got the tattoo in my twenties when I first moved to New York, so probably what it symbolized most of all was a big fuck-you to my parents, who hated tattoos and were scandalized. Long pause. Kathy: Where did you go to college again? Stephanie: U. of Illinois Champaign. You? Kathy: Harvard. It’s kind of amazing we’re friends, isn’t it? Stephanie: I’d say we’re doubles partners. Kathy: Nice. Stephanie: You can take it. Kathy: You get the chairs, I’ll grab us a couple of iced teas.

The gold veins on the cover represent the Japanese art of kintsugi, “golden repair,” in which pieces of broken pottery are mended with powdered gold and lacquer, rather than treating the breaks as blemishes to conceal. The technique shows us that although an object cannot be returned to its original state, fragments can be made whole again.

Pottery. The Sumerians created the potter’s wheel and refined the art of creating air and watertight vessels made of clay.

Mother! Ripped apart. Reaped stones of poverty, weeds that sprouted. Grown to fast, crowned young mother. HIV reaped the harvest of my parents left me with nothing but toddler to take care of. Robbed my youth and my hey days, left naked among a thousand suns. The splendor, the splendor of pain. My face is beautiful broken pottery, a poetry art scene. The screams inside ravage and rammer the very child born along thorns of anguish.

People drank from pottery that was worn and weathered. They called this practice wabi sabi. Wabi sabi is the art of honoring the beauty in imperfection. It’s not about creating intentional imperfections. It’s about accepting that flaws are inevitable—and recognizing that they don’t stop something from becoming sublime.

Whether you’re painting, throwing pottery, raising children, or building a business, we’re all Spiritual Artists in the act of the creative process. Our task in life is to express our unique “is-ness” through the creative process.

during this peaceful Sakoku period that unique arts and culture evolved, mostly in Edo and other large cities. These included ukiyo-e woodblock prints, pottery, haiku poetry, kabuki plays and the creation of about 250 varieties of cherry blossom in the Edo gardens of the daimyō lords.