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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

i have a deep, special affinity for this red georgia clay, and my daddy’s family has a branch of fairly well-known folk potters, so perhaps it was inevitable that i’d eventually get my hands muddy. i’ve spent the past several monday mornings claying together (my term for doing hand built pottery) with my friends amanda and janet.

here’s the inside of my very first born:

my second born took a different shape:

a close up of my second piece:

we’re approaching the glazing stage with these 2 (and a third piece that needs a bit more work to get it to the i’m-plumb-tickled stage) which means i’ll soon have to declare my signature, and i tell you what: i’d rather have a root canal without anesthesia than to have to name something - especially something of my creation.

words are my favorite toys, so i’ve pulled out my stash of words and spent hours - days, even - sifting through in search of the perfect name for my pottery, but so far nothing feels just right. nothing has just the right rhythm. nothing enkindles just the right smile. i just can’t seem to find (or create) the word (i prefer a one-word deep signature) that will evoke the expression i want to convey.

i’ve considered foragings, glimmerlings, flares, ambles, murmurs, reveries, rain, surges, landings, licks, squish, oasis, unfoldings, pockets, thresholds, portals, conjured, chaos (which actually translates to “the great coming” to some obscure natives), solace, flings, yearnings, whispers. i considered “grass” (as used in walt whitman’s poem, leaves of grass), and i’ve considered lark and impulsitivities. i’ve considered “circumference” ’cause it’s what emily dickinson said she was in the business of, and i like her work and her cleverness. besides, i’m kinda’ in that same line of work myself - and i don’t just mean that i spend the better part of most days running around in circles.

i’ve built words like n.ark (for Noah’s ark = big, foolish creations that turn out to be useful and not so crazy after all); dandylines (like those ever-blooming yellow dandelions the children used to bring me, their eyes glazed over with the beauty of the flower and their act, proving once again that a weed is just a flower blooming where you don’t want anything to be blooming OR it’s all in the eye), (k)now, clayos (rhymes with chaos), and soulace (pronounced solace).

i’ve added suffixes and parts of words to pottery words and come up with other words to consider: clayspicious; scultptaneity; sculptuary; sculptsical; sculpdillyicious. loving the word “metamorphosis”, i’ve tinkered it to me,th’morphosis or me,th’morphic, but some pieces might not be large enough for that many letters, and besides, i seriously doubt anybody would get it anyway.

i’ve considered run-on words like fleetingfixations or tendersprouts or suddenstorms or licksoflightning, but those all sound like they need a www before and .com after.

I’ve even fished out those old kentucky derby programs that mom and dad brought home as souvenirs for me oh so many years ago. i just LOVE race horse names - always have - so i was easy to “shop” for. they simply gave me their programs along with the cutest little bookmarks. or at least what i THOUGHT were bookmarks until that fateful collegiate day when i ordered a drink and squealed with delight at being served another bookmark (usually known as swizzlestick to those who get out more) to add to my collection.

so alas, the search continues. sigh. and the clock ticks louder as we approach the day when janet says “tell me now.” sigh again.

it’s just so hard. names can be so liberating, and on the flip side, names can be so limiting.

it would probably help if i knew what feeling i wanted to bubble up with my pottery. shoot, if i knew that, i’d probably use that word as the name. and i don’t really collect anything, so i can’t really go down that alley. my favorite theme is hidden in plain view, and the only thing that’s brought me to is “vug” - a rock with a hidden part that’s a different kind of rock. and here’s the best part: that hidden bit of different kind of rock is only revealed when the exterior rock is worn away through natural erosion. i love that metaphor, but VUG? i just don’t think that’ll work. i value wit, that special kind of humor that comes with a heapin’ helpin’ of intelligence, but that doesn’t seem a likely name for clayations, either.

my maternal grandmother hated nicknames. “your mother (or daddy, depending on which parent was her biological child) gave you a perfectly good name, and we’re going to use it,” she said over and over and over again. her admonition kinda’ stuck - so much so that i only gave my children nicknames in the last 5 years. alison is moxie because she’s one big-thinking-risk-taking-kind-of-girl. And kipp . . . he’s slug, the hottest coal in the firebin of a steam engine, the hottest piece of coal that keeps the fire burning and the engine moving.

the kids (under the illusion that the empty nest was miserable for us) gave us a dog for christmas several years ago. i was in a play then (a british comedy. i was playing the role of phoebe reece), and since alison delivered the cute little thing a mere hour before i had to be at the theatre, i bundled her (the puppy, not alison) up and took her with me, handing her over to the stage manager’s kids to tend to during the show. during the middle of act 2, there i was: delivering lines off stage while 2 people changed my costume when the stage manager came by and whispered, “we’ve voted, and her name is phoebe.”

those names were easy, but naming my pottery, well that’s a whole different story. and the “funniest” thing of all is that it’s not like i’m going to sell my pottery, so there’s some question about what difference the name really does make anyway. but naming is important. it’s owning and suggesting and explaining and tickling and entertaining and delighting. naming says a lot about the person who created the work, and therein may lie my problem. (stay tuned for a blog-entry-in-progress.)

speaking of blogs . . . my clay day buddy amanda just emailed me (i kid you not, she really did just email me. which proves, of course, that great minds do indeed run together) with her name: fancypants pottery. isn’t that precious? which immediately brought to mind the name cuteshoes clay for me.

and on it goes. i don’t know. i just don’t know.

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