What if?

I often make a bunch of little kiln fillers that I don't spend a lot of time on - like small extruded vases and olive canoes - usually from a mixture of leftover clays. For the little vases I normally just paddle the tops to thicken the rims. Then I cut a circle slightly bigger than the tube and paddle it onto the bottom, paddling up the edge. Soon however Keith's voice from our first mentorship meeting started echoing in my head - "what if?" I decided then to use whatever bits and pieces were left over for the bottoms, as long as the piece was big enough to cover the it. Then when I paddled up the bottom edge, it made the bottom much more interesting and casual. Then I asked another what if ? What if rather then just randomly cut leftovers, what if I cut out a pattern? Another different look.

I had spent the late Sept afternoon working on these little vases on the porch of the little cabin that we had spent all summer building. It is up the hill from the wood kiln and overlooks the Ottawa Valley. As I finished each vase I lined up them upon the railing. It was a wonderful sight with the fall colours in the valley as a backdrop. It had been a glorious day to work with clay and to spend asking "What if?"

Not the best photo to see details of bottoms, but you can see the progression from the plain bottom on the right to more intricate cutout bottom pieces on left.