Life's Seasons

Still Waters Pottery has been in existence for just over a year, but it has been a dream in my heart for my entire life.  In the thoughts below, I remember my past as seasons--my first season making art, second season making for others, third season teaching art making, and finally in my fourth season creating art on my own terms.

Summer                                        

A time for exploration and discovery.  A time for play.  Just like a childhood summer, my early years were full of freedom and possibility.  Mixing mud pancakes, then slinging them like a tiny Jackson Pollock, delighting in the splats and the action they represented!  I explored the Earth’s textures with my friends and siblings: feathery wheat fields, soft moss under our toes, structures made of stick piles, and more mud in creek beds and clay banks!  Living in the Land of What If and creating our own worlds!  Like all children, I was an artist.

Autumn

Summer doesn’t last a lifetime, and in autumn spontaneity disappears like leaves falling from a tree.  My world was less carefree; it was time to earn a living.  Raise children.  Be responsible.  All my choices, by the way, and my autumn was spent creating art for pay.  As a freelance designer for the floor covering industry, there was plenty of drawing,  painting, and problem-solving but it was for someone else.  My art was not my own.  But what I didn’t recognize was the hidden growth in sensibilities and refinement of skills, which I continue to use in my art today.

Winter

Life moves underground in this season. Nothing above the surface shows promise of personal growth.  As an art teacher, I tended to children (my students and my own) who were enjoying their own summers.  The chores were numerous, too many to count, but the opportunities to create came especially as I sought ways to engage my students so they could find their own artistic paths.  Teaching was an incredible opportunity and heart investment.  It didn’t leave much time for my own art, so I took pleasure in occasionally making art with school supplies, which sent me back in time to my own summer!

Spring                                              

Spring brings a warm new energy, beaming with promise. What has been hidden emerges with energy and joy.  This is the season of my retirement, alive with purpose; I create as my heart chooses.  After my official retirement, I took a Gap Year to make sure that my dream of a pottery studio was the goal I wanted to embrace.  At the onset of the COVID pandemic, I made my decision and set out to create my own pottery studio, Still Waters Pottery, and I haven’t looked back at all!