From Porcelain to Pickles
The studio has been quiet since May.
Here is where I went.
Most of my hours this year have gone to a company called NYLA, which makes sparkling pickle juice in Detroit. I am its creative director. Which means I have spent a year thinking about brine the way I used to think about glaze.
I didn't expect the two to have much to say to each other.
Porcelain is clay, water, fire and time. You can't hurry the drying. You cannot open the kiln early to see how it is going. Everything you did carelessly on Monday arrives all at once on Thursday, and by then there is nothing to be done about it.
A brine is dill, cucumber, water, salt and vinegar. Five things, in proportions that do not forgive being approximate. It can't be hurried either. It also tells you nothing at all until it is finished.
A brine is a glaze recipe with a different clock.
So it has not been a departure so much as the same discipline in another material. It's been good. It has also taken every hour I have, and the kiln has been cold since spring.
Which brings me to the work.
There are pieces here. Finished, boxed, waiting. Made to be worn and sitting in a cupboard in Detroit instead, while my hands are somewhere else. That is the wrong place for them.
So it is all still listed, and I would rather be straightforward about why than dress it up. This is what happens when a studio goes quiet and the work is still sitting there. I would rather these pieces were on people.
Some of them will come back. Those are the Essentials. Forms I would make again, when I make again.
Some of them will not. The Archive is pieces I will likely never make again. When those are gone they are gone.
GRAMMAR is not closing. I'm just not making right now, and I'm not going to give you a date, because I don't have one and I would rather not invent one for the sake of a tidier ending. But the list stays open. When I am making again, you will hear it here first.
Thank you for being here for the quiet part.
Sarah
NYLA is at nylajuice.com, if you want to see it. It looks nothing like this.