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SniPetsMore options Jan 14 2006, 9:12 pm What are pots but tools? Louis On Jan 14, 2006, at 6:41 PM, Lee Love wrote: - Show quoted text - Louis Katz On 2006/01/15 12:12:53, Louis Katz (lk...@falcon.tamucc.edu) wrote: > What are pots but tools? Most of the pots I like are tools. :-) Picasso said that artists are tools. I suppose, if you believe in the insubstantiality of "things", then all "things" are tools. Meaning: things don't exist in themselves, but only exist to enable processes to happen. -- Lee Love in Mashiko, Japan http://mashiko.org FEb? 2006 The only meaningful qualification for making great pots is making them. > old timers we hold in high regard did > pottery very well some 5000 years ago with no science per sey but great > observation skills (because they lived the life of clay)... I think the problem with CM is that they are trying to sell magazines, not trying to show great work. They have a diverse audience and( I think) are trying to meet the audiences apparent needs. I don't think the magazine every had the same kind of goals as American Ceramics or Ceramic Art and Perception, but I think the editing used to reflect the needs and wants of Bill Hunt and that the goal back then was quality. I think the magazine is lot more hit and miss than it used to be but IMHO it used to hit more often and miss less. It is worth while to send stuff in to the magazine. If it is well written, or even marginally well, and has excellent quality visuals it stands a real chance of being published. The only things they have ever refused from me are some suggestions that were tongue and cheek. You can have a big impact in CM, lots of young clayers read it. The only solution to Clayart is do something else. It is like the current US administration talking so proudly about American values and acting more and more dictatorialy. To quote Jenny Holzer, "abuse of power comes as no surprise." The more power is used the more its abused. I have started to think of power in terms of decibels. One of those ham radio things. 3db means you have doubled your power. When you amplify a signal you get harmonics and other spurious signals. These are signals that happen at multiples of the original signal or signals that are additive or subtractive results of other signals in your transmitter or amp. When you have lots of power spurious signals can have devistating effects. Usually this means in ham radio that your transmitter wipes out your neighbors Super Bowl reception. It can be difficult to get rid of all spurious effects when you use high power. Good filters might drop the strength of spurious signals by 30db (for example ....I think) or about 1/1000 of their original level. This would mean that you might end up with .1 watt if you start with 1000 watts , a signal that can travel around the world. If you start with 5 watts walking across the carpet would make more noise. It is a basic principle in ham radio to use the smallest amount of power you need to get the job done. I am a low power operator. I have a .4 watt radio that is on the 40 meter band. Its capable of worldwide coverage, although my furthest contact was about 240 miles. I also have a 5 watt radio that is only good for about 250 miles under good conditions. Neither of these radios has enough power to do jack to my neighbors TV but 95% of the time they get the job done. Their spurious signals are so low that they are below the level of noise from powerlines, blenders, and other elctrical devices. Clayart's moderator either needs to decide to use less power, or filter his power better when he uses it. 2008/2 I haven't seen any of these pictures. Probably missed them somewhere. I am not reading the list well enough, too much angst here.... But I wanted to write about my feelings about kitsch, cute, and dated. Items that are dated were not necessarily bad in their times. They tend to be but I remember the theopening of possilbitiies presented by early computer art. I have little desire to revisit these pieces but they opened my mind to ideas that continue to have meaning. No one that looked at them today would see anything but quaint dated simplistic work. Pallisy ware (hope I spelt it correctly), looks like it was made in the seventies but is hundreds of years old . I find this amazing and this fact alone causes much of the enjoyment I find in it. I love the confusion it causes in my preconceptions. I have had long conversations with students about kitsch and cute. I don't have a good definition for either that I really feel comfortable with, but to work without one for a second, I have no problems with work that is either. The problem is that cute drowns out other value. Even when the artist starts making works of beauty or meaning with cute florishes(sp) or cute hooks to draw in the viewer, soon they seem to find themselves making work whose sole quality is cuteness. I find this depressing. But if thats what they want to make and thats what the public wants to buy.... I am not even sure that cute is neutral. It may be a positive quality. That is, cute by itself may be enriching. I am not sure. It just makes us blind to other qualities. Kind of like too much salt on your food. Kitsch for me operates as an analogue or subset of cute, I am not sure which, ask me in ten years. Louis SoHoTX? 2006 march There is no escape from tradition. We don't work afresh, without experience. We are slaves of our experience. Even to break with tradition is to acknowlege it. No escape. Louis Katz View profile More options Nov 22 2005, 7:43 pm I am a gas hog. My kiln smokes. I have a Van, my wife drives a van. But hey, I need my van to pull my flaming pipe organ around town! My high horse is however that I specifically bought a house close to work. I did not do it for the environment. I bought close so my commute would be short. The people costs of a half hour commute are tremendous, ~240 hours per year. Despite living 1.8 miles from work I still have a long commute. REason?: I walk. While I can claim being good for the environment, and yes I do care, the environment is not my reason for walking. 1. I need excercise and it is stupid to drive to a gym to excercise unless it is so polluted that you can't excercise out of doors. Walk to the gym. 2. I love saving money. Even if does not amount to a hill of beans. Gas is cheap. Especially when you drive 4 miles a day. 3. Walking gives me time to talk on my ham radio with friends in Thailand. You just have to love ham radio over the internet. 4. I don't think the environment was a big enough reason to live close to work. I want bigger energy taxes and lower income tax. Savings 200 miles/week* 50 = 10,000 miles per year @ $.20/ mile= $2000 ( $.40 is abetter figure) 240 hours at $20 = $4800 per year Not having to join the club $1000 per year except I could join the University health club for about $180 Total about $7000. and its good for the environment. Louis Louis Katz View profile More options Mar 29, 5:54 pm Hello Claycraft, Below are two messages I posted to a Texas Clay list. Some of you are probably more knowlegable about tea than I am, feel free to correct me. But I seem to be brewing well these days. Anyhow I thought some of these posts might be interesting to y'all. Louis Begin forwarded message: My favorite tea merchant is: http://www.holymtn.com The easiest tea to brew and not screw up seems to be the Pu erh teas. If you have only had grocery or health food store teas you will probably love this stuff. It does have lots of zingo so don't drink it late in the day if you are not a cafeholic. The cheapest one they have,"Camels Breath" in the smaller cakes takes one cake of tea to about 5 cups of water. Heat the water and let it cool below 200 degrees. The temperature an auto drip coffee pot holds the coffee at is a good temperature. Unwrap one Pu erh cake and drop it in 5 cups of water. For education, taste it every five minutes, but this tea needs at least 20 minutes steep. It can steep all day in a thermos.It only gets bitter if heated too hot. Coffee pots are a bit harsh for it as the temperature at the bottom of the pot where it contacts the heating element is hotter than it should be. This tea you can water down if its too strong. It is good iced but drink it hot first. A nice change from every day teas are white and yellow teas. I really like the Mutan white although it is inexpensive. The trick with white teas is to use a relatively lot of tea and brew it for a short time same temperature as the Pu erh, It should be brewed in a small pot Yixing size. It should be brewed just short of having much color.... it should be drunk white, not green. This can require a quick hand pouring. The first few times you brew it pour little bits into a small cup and drink it until it has brewed the right amount of time. A demitasse sized cup is a little large. Yellow teas are similar to white ones. Whatever teas you buy or brew try different amounts and lengths of steeping. In general I favor short steeps and more tea. Holy Mountain sells little sample packs and since I am not an every day tea person I tend to use these, although I bought a pound of Pu erh for my exhibit. I have been giving away lots of it as I know I will not get through it all in 6 months. I don't know what Houston is like but when I ask the question down here in SoHo? Texas, " who has a single handmade pot they eat or drink off of?" in my beginning class it is a rare year when I get an affirmative. Most people eat off cheap junk, not even expensive junk. I feel like I have to sell the concepts of quality, and the value of expression, connection with makers, really sell the concept of the search for quality and meaning. It is hard. I have had numerous students who have learned to admire pots through reading Leach/Yanagi/ Hamada literature. While I know it is not the only way it seems to work for me. While I can fall prey to the idea that a simplistic idea will solve a complex problem, they seem to never work. Global warming is just part of a more universal and all encompassing problem or set of problems. We confuse quantity with quality, and values with value. "The almighty dollar" is an accurate expression. We like to translate things into dollar equivalents. It is far more usefull most of the time to convert things to time equavalents or some unit of pleasure.I like the microorgasm We really won't get to where we need to be with reducing carbon footprints unless we can figure out what is in it for each of us. Personally I think the problem is that I don't need more stuff. I have way too much junk. I need better stuff. Quality not quantity. "Spiritual" enrichment rather than riches. Teaism only uses tea as an educational tool. Teaism seems to be a method for learning about the world and our relationship with it. Another great web purveyor is Penzeys spices http://Penzeys.com Buy some of their Dutch cocoa. Heat some water as above, about two demitasse cups worth. Stir in lots of cocoa powder ( no sugar, no milk). DO NOT USE HERSHEYS. If you feel like using hersheys cocoa to try this just use sawdust instead. Lots is about 2 heaping teaspoons but I don't measure for this. Stir it really good and drink it. If your palette is really used to sugar use a minimum. Oddly it is good with a bit of paprika in it. A bit is somewhere around 1/2 teaspooon and a smidge of hot pepper can be nice too. You can try it Caravan style with butter, and a smidge of salt. Turkish coffe is good with butter and salt too. Enjoy Louis Hi Kim, I am a clayer who uses video, much as sometime sculptors use clay, although I am starting to have more general philosophical ideas for videos, but they all come from Taoism's and Buddhism's role in Clayism and Teaism, so even they are clayer ideas. If you are not familiar with the term clayer read the Clayer Manifesto at: http:// critical.tamucc.edu/wiki/ClayerManifesto? I am perfectly willing to talk about kiln design. I feel like I know lots. There are others who have built more and know more, although I am sure they know different. If you are building a kiln it would be fairly simple to copy the one in the video, although you might have trouble figuring out which bricks end up being softbrick. Come down and see it. I do not feel competent to write a book on soda or soda kilns. I could write a book or dvd on general studio stuff, how to keep your studio alive and running etc. Or I could do one on the interface of science and the ceramics studio, a general physics/ chemistry for the potter sort of thing. I tried to get NCECA to let me do a lecture on Calculus as a means of understanding form but it got turned down. I am running in other directions right now. I am looking for venues for my latest exhibit. The promo is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wi4yiXrnbA . It would look great in San Angelo or some other museum setting with a tall ceiling. I am still getting materials together. Today I am trying to finish the disk images for my table at NCECA. I will have all four of my videos on display on the computer and DVD players at the table as well as the kiln building video and my new exhibit promo video. Come by and put on some headphones. I have not been good at marketing or promoting myself. This is the year to do a better job. So with the goal of shameless self promotion I will give you following list of links: http://critical.tamucc.edu/wiki/Katz/ClayerManifesto My New Manifesto http://www.youtube.com/user/RoadEasyGentleman Youtube Videos (has a few videos by Sammy Katz) http://falcon.tamucc.edu/~lkatz/cs/index.html Flame Throwing Pipe Organ Site http://falcon.tamucc.edu/~lkatz/gc2beta1/input.htm online Glaze Calculator (Original program written in 1975) (Use Lithium Carb box for Lithium) http://falcon.tamucc.edu/~lkatz/LK/index.htm These are images that go back into the seventies. http://falcon.tamucc.edu/~lkatz/a.mid http://falcon.tamucc.edu/~lkatz/b.mid http://falcon.tamucc.edu/~lkatz/c.mid Musical compositions http://www.youtube.com/user/backFlipVideo My kids videos http://falcon.tamucc.edu/~lkatz/ This is the real "HomePage" http://critical.tamucc.edu/wiki/Katz/HomePage This is where I store misc. links to my stuff. Louis Also if you m |