WHEN ANNE OPENED THE DOOR of the kiln, I got a sense of the separation and wonder a mother must feel on seeing her newborn for the first time. By what miracle has this child been created—in me, through me? Anne, too, had a look of heightened anticipation about her, given the flush of her cheeks and the slight tremor of her hands. “Even after years of working with ceramics,” she said as she birthed my sculpture from the belly of the kiln, “I still get excited when I see a fired piece for the first time. Firing is the most critical part of the ceramics process. It converts weak clay into a strong, durable, form.”
Weak into strong. “It shrank.”
Anne chuckled and held it to the light. “Clay shrinks over ten percent from its raw to its fired state.” She rotated it in her hands. “Good. No cracks or warping.”
No mold. Blemish free. “The color is different, too. It looks whiter. Smoother.”
“That’s part of the thrill, Marjorie. You never know what your piece will look like after a fiery 1,940 degrees in the kiln. When you submit something to heat, it becomes something else.”
At my silence, Anne broke off her inspection of my handiwork and scrutinized me instead. “Well?”
“I feel alienated from it, as though my work and someone else’s got switched in the kiln.”
“I call that the ‘Are you sure that’s my baby?’ syndrome,” Anne said, “which often happens at the bisque stage. You’ve been separated from the piece for a while and the energy of inspiration has worn off. It has also changed in color, size, and texture.”
“Maybe if I feel the peaks and hollows, I could recognize it tactilely, you know, experience a rebirth rather than a birth.”
Anne nodded and handed over the bisque piece.
I closed my eyes and explored the fired clay with my fingers, trying to remember. Pull, stretch, pinch, squash. What had inspired me? What invisible guide had directed my hands? Familiar warmth flowed through me, along with the desire to connect with the lost part of me that had somehow manifested itself within the clay and survived the fiery kiln, only to come out stronger. No warps, no cracks. But the answers didn’t come.
I opened my eyes and handed the piece back to Anne. “It’s painful to look at, yet it invigorates me and makes room for hope. Does it do the same for you?”
“For me, it’s like hearing a disturbingly beautiful symphony.”
Anne set the piece on a turntable and spun it slowly, studying it from all angles. “You could brush on some colored stains or experiment with different glazes. Maybe blue. It looks fluid like water and sky...”
A picture of my sister came to mind, with her passion for red—red leather jacket, red boots—my strong, courageous, passionate sister. Then I thought of my red-skinned ancestors, warm, simple, trusting. “No. It has to be red.”
“Are you sure? Red is an odd color, hard to control. It does strange things in the kiln, sometimes even turns black.”
“The more shades of red the better,” I said. “Do you have an air brush?”
“And what do you know about air brushing?”
“Absolutely nothing. But I’d like to try spraying the color on.”
“Wow, aren’t you brave all of a sudden.”
“You said art was something we can give ourselves for no benefit that we can see.”
“Spraying on the color with an airbrush is good for gradual color transition,” Anne admitted. “It gives a soft, light-and-shadow effect, where the colors blend and seem to melt away at the edges. It’s a technique I use when a work is unusual in shape and size, such as this one.” She gave the sculpture a final slow spin. “Tell you what. I’ll demonstrate how to use the spray gun and compressor and let you practice on newspapers. Then I’ll show you where I store the glazes and you can experiment with different shades on some of my bisque rejects.”
No one trained me for this. What if I mess up? “Maybe you better teach me how to paint the glaze on too, just in case the air brush doesn’t work out?”
~~~
It was well past noon by the time Anne had finished with her instructions. “You’ll find some energy bars and bottled water in the fridge,” she said, then waved goodbye and left me to it.
The idea of air brushing the piece appealed to me. It seemed so freeing, so easy. In actuality, it was neither. Every time I aimed the gun at the newspaper, envisioning a soft, sheer dusting of color settling on its surface, I ended up with blotches and splats that reminded me of the damage done by those paint guns used as toy weapons. The airbrush would clog, or the compressor would kick in, and the new surge of power would blast the paint—and its musty, sulfuric fumes—out of control.
About to call it quits, I heard a voice.
Put the gun away.
Whoever it was, I had to agree. It was time to put the gun away. Too violent. Too unruly. I turned on the radio, not bothering to change the current rock-and-roll station to one more suited to my taste. I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing, and I definitely wasn’t transmitting any insights from the depths.
Time to regroup.
Nodding to the Rolling Stones, I rotated the turntable. The fluorescent light played off the bisque surface of the sculpture, shadow and light, shadow and light. Then a small window opened in my mind.
Darkness and Dawn. I’ll call it Between Darkness and Dawn.
Drums pounded, guitars strummed, and voices wailed as I continued to rotate the sculpture. How soft and malleable the clay had once been in my hands and how hard it was now due to the inferno in the kiln, temperatures of unimaginable heat, hot enough to melt glass.
The Rolling Stones sang about the color black, and as their loud, piercing music vibrated around and through me, I picked up a paintbrush and dipped it into a jar of crimson glaze. “Red. It has to be red.”
I dabbed the glaze onto one section of my sculpture. Assertive ruby swipes of color brightened the surface before fading into dull patches as they dried. Red is good, the voice said. Now a dab of green. There. Yes. And there. Now brown.
While switching glazes from Holiday Green to Walnut Brown, I lost control. And as the Rolling Stones continued to sing about painting things black, I wondered if maybe I should’ve left the piece alone.
~~~
On her return to the studio, Anne turned off the radio. “You, listening to rock and roll. Why does that strike me as odd?” She eyed my handiwork and her mouth tensed. “So, you decided not to use the air brush after all.”
“It wouldn’t cooperate,” I said, unmoved by what sounded like disappointment in her voice. “Let’s say, I faced a bit of resistance.”
Her eyebrows nearly disappeared into her curly gray hair.
“I knew from the beginning this work wasn’t mine,” I said. “If it’s ruined, it’s ruined. No big deal.”
“But—” She blinked and cleared her throat— “I had it scheduled for a showing at the gallery on Saturday.”
I broke into a sweat, as if the room had turned into a kiln set to bisque firing. “Don’t you think you jumped the gun a bit?”
“I didn’t think your muse would allow you to screw up this badly.”
Maybe I should have listened to the Rolling Stones and painted it black. “Actually, I wouldn’t have wanted it displayed in public anyway. So, no big loss.”
Anne gave the turntable a spin and watched as the reddish, greenish, brownish conglomeration twirled like a ballerina doing a not-so-perfect pirouette. “You were willing to display Adam’s.”
“That’s different.”
“Hypocrite.”
Though I hated to admit it, she was right. I’d been anxious to share Adam’s work, but was averse to sharing my own. “Too late now.”
Anne squinted as if in pain. “I should’ve warned you that certain glazes don’t mix well on the same piece. And red is so... finicky.”
At that moment, I came close to understanding how Adam must feel. As soon as you start concentrating on the outcome instead of the process, the joy is gone. “If it’s any consolation, I had a ball ruining this piece, Anne. I really did.”
One more glance at the work of art turned aberration and we walked away, no longer worried that it might fall and break or be stolen. It was just a glob of altered earth, manipulated by human hands, inspired by mind and spirit.