Project Description

One of the things I like best about our yearly celebration of art is the chance to expand our minds of what art even is.

When we think of art, our mind typically assumes we’re talking about painting. And painting is an incredible form of art, one that I have partaken in from time to time, but today I want to talk about other forms of art and lift up the diversity within the different forms of art. Because I’ve learned a lot from trying different forms of art. So today I want to talk about some of those different kinds of art we often don’t talk about on Love of Art Sunday, and what I’ve learned from my experiences in creating that alternative art. I’m going to focus on writing and pottery today, but I could just as easily talk about graphic design, singing, baking, or the art of a life well lived.

I think I’m probably most artistic with writing and for a very long time it’s been my primary artistic medium. There’s something about crafting the right word to fit the right emotion that has spoken to me for well over a decade. I love crafting a new world where anything is possible, and inviting people to join me in that new world. And I love non-fiction writing, in particular blogging – I used to blog about my spiritual journey as a new UU Young Adult, and it helped me really explore my new blossoming spirituality.

My embrace of writing really began with National Novel Writing Month – a challenge every November to write a 50 thousand word novel during the course of a single month. I started doing NaNoWriMo as it’s called for short while I was a college student at Georgia Tech and needed some sort of creative outlet. And over a decade later of successful attempts, I still try every November to write another first draft of a new novel. My first attempts were laughably bad – I will go back and read them from time to time and yes, I do laugh – but I’ve seen how I’ve grown and how my writing has grown over time. And now from time to time I’ll write stories here for the Time for All Ages and Children’s Chapels, and other congregations have started using my stories in their worship services too.

Words inspire, just as paintings inspire, just as art inspires. So, what has writing taught me about life?

First, blocks happen. In fact, I was blocked in writing this homily – we all get blocked in life but we often talk about blocks only in the realm of creativity – how we’re blocked on a painting or a story or something else creative. But blocks happen in all parts of our lives – from when we’re feeling blocked spiritually to being blocked in our career advancement. Writing has taught me that blocks are often there for a reason – even if it’s for no other reason than to show us how much we really want something. We need to figure out a new way of working around the block and need to power through the blocks if we want to meet our goal.

Writing also showed me that people find different meanings in the same object. I remember I once wrote a story where I made the color of something purple. Someone left a comment that went on and on how it was such a meaningful choice that I chose purple as it’s the color of royalty, and what that must mean for the character in the story. I had actually chosen purple as it was the first color that popped in my head. But just because that person found meaning in something I hadn’t intended doesn’t mean that their discovery was invalid – it was true for them, even if it wasn’t true for me. Perspectives matter and all perspectives are valid. This is something that cuts across all forms of art and all mediums of art – perspectives matter, and people take their own meaning no matter what the artist intended. And everyone’s perspective is a valid perspective, even if it’s different than yours.

Now lately I’ve found a new artistic medium, a new artistic outlet, for myself. Now that part of my job is writing stories, writing just hasn’t had the same impact as an artistic, creative outlet to me. And I think it’s important that all of us have some sort of artistic, creative outlet. So I decided to get back into wheel thrown pottery.

Fifteen years ago or so when I was a student at Georgia Tech, I took a just for the fun of it and not for a grade wheel thrown pottery class and loved it. I had always wanted to get back into it, and finally, fifteen years later, got back into it. I’ve been taking classes for about three months now, and it’s become a weekly staple. I love my pottery classes over at Madison Mud studio and love getting back to creating wheel thrown pottery.

And you know? I totally suck at it. Ok, I’m getting better and better with each class, but I’ve had some pretty epic failures with my pottery so far. Almost everything comes off a little off-centered and often about half of my attempts on the wheel end up with a disaster of some sort – just last week when I was trimming a bowl, it flew off my wheel, smashed into another wheel, and the formerly not too bad bowl turned into something closer resembling a pancake.

I laughed it off. I remember when I was learning to make bowls, I ended up with clay coating my arms, cheeks, hair, everywhere really, none of the bowls came out like bowls, and I left with a huge smile on my face, despite failure after failure.

Because what has pottery taught me? Far and away, the most important lesson pottery has taught me is to not be attached to the final product. There are a lot of places in the process of making wheel thrown pottery where something different than you expected can happen – especially when throwing, trimming, and glazing. If I tried to make something identical to something I had already made, there’s just too many variables at play and they wouldn’t end up identical. I’ve made some great bowls on the wheel and when I glazed them, they came out so totally different than I was hoping for. You never know how the final product will look after glazing until it comes out of the kiln. Every time I’ve put a piece in to the kiln with a certain expectation of how it’ll come out, I’ve been disappointed. When I don’t much care in the end how it looks, I end up pleasantly surprised. I can’t be attached to those final outcomes – the process matters more than the product.

The process matters more than the product.

I think this is a universal truth in art and creativity, and it’s something that transcends every artistic medium – from Architecture to Youtube videos. No matter what form the art takes in the end, no matter what artistic medium you use, the process of making that art changes who we are fundamentally as a person. How we’re changed differs from person to person, but we are fundamentally changed by embracing our creativity no matter our creative outlet.

The process indeed matters more than the product.