Looking Closely: The Practice of Looking
I made it to the Catskills. I had no idea how similar the topography would feel to Vermont, with winding roads, mountains and farms. My GPS brought me to Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts over a mountain and down into Maplecrest, New York.
I chuckled to myself on the first day. I had signed up for the course mostly to spend time with my friend Polly. She had taken a course with Suze Lindsey and wanted to learn more from her. When Polly found this course in New York, I said sure without really reading much about it.
The course was titled Inspired by History.
I quickly learned that we would be looking closely at historical ceramics and that Margaret Bohls, who was co-teaching with Suze, would be sharing a great deal of ceramic history with us. I enjoy learning from people who have taken the time to really understand a subject. Almost immediately, I was intrigued and more fully engaged in the class.
I found myself returning to images of Daunian pottery from southeastern Italy, vessels from Bronze Age China, and a Minoan burial chest. The Minoan chest especially caught my attention. I realized I had photographed one when I visited Crete in 2010.
What was I seeing in these objects that made me want to look again?
Something I have been wrestling with for the last couple of years—and truthfully, probably since I became a maker—is this question:
What is my visual language?
I can learn from the way other cultures have used pattern, repetition and abstraction without simply taking their marks and making them mine.
So where do my marks come from?
I would say they come from the waterfront and the woods around me—the lines left in the sand, the movement of water, bird tracks, bark and the patterns I stop to photograph.
Maybe it begins by looking long enough at the things around me to discover the patterns that are already there. Maybe I have been looking closely for years and didn’t realize it until I took the time to look back through my own photographs and journaling.
Looking at these historical ceramics helped me recognize that makers have always looked at the world around them, simplified what they saw, and developed their own visual languages from it.
I think that’s what Margaret and Suze helped me understand more clearly.
After looking at historical images during the workshop, we began making. Polly and I decided to work with Margaret, who builds with coils and draws information from historical vessels to create her own work. Both Margaret and Suze encouraged us to begin our studio work by sketching daily and looking at historical imagery instead of turning to social media for inspiration.
I spent five days building with coils. I made a tall, bird-like pitcher, a bottle form and cups. There were plenty of “let’s try it and see” moments throughout the week.
Now that I am home and finishing these pieces, I find myself looking again at the historical vessels we studied.
I’m beginning to notice something.
Squared forms, geometry, repeated patterns and texture resonate with me. I see them in the Minoan burial chest I photographed years ago in Crete. I see them in the ancient Chinese bronze vessel and in the patterns of Daunian pottery.
The pieces I made during the workshop don’t necessarily reflect those things.
And that’s okay.
I wasn’t trying to make finished work that represented my visual language. I was learning to build with coils, experimenting with unfamiliar forms and seeing where the clay might take me.
Maybe that’s another part of the practice of looking. It isn’t only about noticing what resonates with me. It’s also about noticing what doesn’t—and asking why.
I came home from Maplecrest with three unfinished forms and a lot more questions than answers. That’s probably a good thing.
I want to develop a more intentional practice of looking—at historical work, at the things I photograph, and at what I notice when I walk the beach or through the woods. Instead of scrolling past hundreds of images, I want to stop at one and ask myself:
What resonates with me? Why?
Maybe my visual language isn’t something I need to find.
Maybe it has been developing all along in the things I stop to notice.
