Building with porcelain bones

Reimagining this process is an act of remaking, so I invite you to journey through these steps with me.

Described as beautiful and complex, porcelain demands attention and dedication like a child.

Its identity is dictated by a perfect mixture of nature and nurture.

Built of two substances, Pentunse, the flesh, and Kaolin, the bones.

One without the other will never make a body of porcelain.

After its nature is set, it is up to nurture from its handler.

It is a material which like us collates memory, influenced by all its experiences.

Either becoming strong and functional or failing on its journey to a destined form.

Once Mined, refined and prepared.

I calculate my desire.

Full of anticipation, This pause holds a kind of grandeur.

Porcelain records every movement of thinking, every change of thought.

I know, I must be present.

For it is both, too facile, as it slips between your fingers like water,

and yet is deeply intractable.

The longer you spend working it, the less it responds.

With any discrepancy in thickness leading to fractures.

As the extruder births the clay into form.

Many will scar and warp.

Some due to its condition,

others due to my action.

Those with too much trauma, over time,

Break.

These bones ask to be picked up and held.

They are no longer clay.

But an object made to become more.

I need them to survive the kiln.

Shrouded in fire, the glaze hugs the porcelain clay tightly,

beyond clothing for a body.

This protection takes them from earth to a new.

Repetition then asks for dedication

To be in sync with a process.

A pulse of action

After all these compositions are not made by chance

Through these stages of making, there are tentative moments

This build of porcelain is only as strong as its maker, its nurturer, its career.

The ones I have rushed, lost focus on, neglected, are now discarded.

The ones I supported then move to create a solid form of collated experience.

Bolt after bolt, the inert box grows

Moving beyond building blocks

From innocence as one

To a rhythmical mass of sonorous plains

constructed into a space where we are all found

After following these leads, I have found the interior of things

These clay objects are now an extension of me, of you, of whoever looks upon them and feels reflection.