“Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.”
Eric Gill, British sculptor, printmaker, writer, 1882-1940
The gift of making pots is a beautiful thing. The first key to making pots is to make pots – the simple rhythm of making gets you from one pot to the next. The second, is to share it – both what you make and the skill of making. The third, which is the best, I’ll save for later.
To grow, your gift must be given away.
We’ve always known that the making of something is only the beginning of its ultimate beauty. That beauty matures when someone else receives it, uses it – loves it, and then passes it on. The object is blessed by the user – it is blessed in its use. Sometimes the passing on is generational – familial. That’s very common in the West – “grandma’s yellow pie plate” comes to mind. But what happens if the passing on were more frequent and among non-family. Would that make them family?
To grow, your gift must pass from hand to hand.
The most basic gift one person can give another – from the beginning of time – has been the gift of food. Archeological findings confirm that the ancient icon of such a gift is a bowl. This is part of the renewable beauty of a bowl – our timeless use of it to feed each other.
To grow, your gift must always be a gift.
A friend of mine gave me something wonderful in his last year – he said that he had always thought of me as a loadbearing brother. Dietrich was a monk at St John’s, and he and I had worked together raising money for the school. We were buddies, and I felt honored by what he’d said. I liked the obvious architectural connotations and the suggestion of friendship as a home. It wasn’t until years later, though, and with help, that I fully understood what he meant. Friends do more than just support each other, they are necessary to each other’s lives – without loadbearing members, there would be no physical house; without loadbearing friends, there would be no life – there would be no home. His kindness inspired me to want to write what he had said on a pot – I mean actually incise the words into the clay. I’ve never been much good with a brush.
To grow, your gift must listen.
It wasn’t the first thing I inscribed on a pot, but eventually it came to be something I wrote frequently. The first thing I wrote was “from my hand to your heart.” That captured what I knew was happening. With my hands I made a bowl that I put into someone else’s heart. Then with their hands they made food and served it in that bowl – now the gift was from their hands to another’s heart, and so on.
To grow, your gift must continue to pass from hand to hand.
But I get ahead of myself. I started making pots again in earnest when I helped to organize the Empty Bowls event in Powderhorn – my neighborhood in south Minneapolis. I needed a reason to make pots again, and this event gave it to me – getting engaged with Empty Bowls saved my life. As the years have gone by people I don’t know have stopped me on the street to tell me they had some of my bowls. They had been to Empty Bowls. Something was happening because of the pots.
To grow …
When I started writing on my pots, really it was just for me, but it turned out to be the beginning of conversations with people I didn’t know – people who had my pots in their kitchen. Now they told me what was inscribed in their pot. And it was obvious it meant something to them. Most memorable and precious was the young mother with a baby who told me that she ate out of “the strength to keep going” every morning. I didn’t know what to say. But I know that Dietrich surely smiled, because the young mother had continued his work – she had begun to teach me that my pots are my prayers – for you.
To grow, your gift …
I have spent my life reading. Early on, philosophy captured my attention. Then what I felt to be cousins or forbears of philosophy drew me in – sacred writings of one ilk or another. The early Christian monks with their sayings – called by the Greeks “apophthegmata” – were particularly appealing. And my interest in the Middle Ages and the rise of Sufism yielded more pithy dicta. All of this meant something to me, and now maybe it could be meaningful to someone else. Words feed us too.
To grow, your gift must …
Then a friend approached me about making cremation urns. The incised inscriptions were a natural. Do you want your mom or dad’s name, your honey’s name, on the urn that will hold their ashes? Yes, and that made me think about the healing process and how it might be helpful if family members actually participated in finishing the urn. I was reminded of the history of commissioned manuscripts – it was a custom dating from the Renaissance that the patron would personally burnish the last piece of gold leaf as a way to participate in the beautiful thing he had commissioned. That naturally suggested the use of gold lustre, inlaid in the inscription, which the surviving children or honey could themselves apply to the urn.
To grow, your gift must pass …
Lustre has a venerable and special history in ceramics — it was conceived and widely practiced in the Muslim world during the Middle Ages, a period that was the height of Islamic science and culture. Since Islam forbade images of God, calligraphy and the use of lustre dominated Islamic ceramics during that time. Related to this development was their knowledge of alchemy – equal parts chemistry, medicine, philosophy, and astrology – which gave birth to their notion of healing bowls. The healing power of precious metals, particularly gold, applied to the pot for decoration – traditionally it was the calligraphic message of “blessings” painted in gold. I thought – healing, empty bowls. Now the bowl blesses us. How could it be otherwise? Who would have thought? Who wouldn’t have thought?
To grow, your gift must pass from your hand and your heart …
If I hadn’t been so lucky, I never would have gone down this road. I am especially grateful to my teacher – wonderful Frances. Thank you. I think you would approve, because your gift has now moved on from your hand and heart, through mine, to others, and it keeps moving. You were one of the early loadbearing members of my life – you were and still are a part of my home.
To grow, your gift must be welcomed home as often as it is given away – every breath has both a bringing in and a passing on, a welcome and a benediction, an inspiration and a letting go.
Addendum
A few years ago I remember seeing a banner announcing an upcoming art festival – “support the arts” – as if the basic relationship between artists and the rest of the world were commercial. We make it; they buy it – for whatever reason. Maybe it’s pretty, or reminds them of a different time or place, or maybe they buy it because it’s the thing to do.
Art is presented as a commercial relationship.
It’s the answer to the question: what do you do? But it’s clearly more, and we know that. It’s not always been simply a question of livelihood, in this country or elsewhere, in this time or since the beginning. Rather…
Art is cultural
It expresses and manifests relationships – among and between members of a family, a tribe, a nation, or simply individuals and groups. It also plays an intrinsic role in religious practices. That history is grand, long, and deeply engrained in most, if not all cultures.
Art connects us.
I’m only interested in how it connects us deeply. Often art is described as a mode of perception – the world is like this or that. I think of it as a mode of being – it’s not “like” this or that, it “is” this or that.
Art is who we are.
Art connects us deeply only to the degree that it connects us directly. It is how we love – as surely as a look, a touch, or a spoken truth.
Art is our gift.
It is not the way we make a living, but the way we live. How we develop and share this gift is the key. It occurred to me when I saw the banner announcing the art festival that it was upside down. We’re not here to support the arts – the arts are here to support us. If art is who we are and what we love, then clearly, it is how we feed each other.
Art feeds us. It helps to define our relationships and binds us together as a community.
How does that work, exactly? Easy, really – just start. Just as the simple rhythm of making can get you from one pot to the next, the simple rhythm of doing for others can get you from one person to the next.
Like art, love is our gift to each other – in fact, it is our greatest gift, and the only one that matters.
“Art is skill – that is the first meaning of the word.” Art begins with physical dexterity, but it matures in moral discernment, from the original meaning of the word “skill” — and that is the second meaning of the word.
From my experience with Empty Bowls I have learned the third meaning, which is the best and which I’ve saved to the last. My work in clay has gone from “skill,” to “moral discernment” — helping to feed people. And finally, to “love” — the role of art in building community and binding us together to take care of each other.
The poet Hafiz says it best, I think:
Art is the conversation between lovers.
Art offers an opening for the heart.