According to Sioux Lore, a long time ago, during a time of famine, a women appeared wearing a white buffalo skin, carrying a sacred pipe. She explained that the wooden stem symbolized the trees, and everything growing on the earth. She also carried a red bowl symbolizing flesh and blood of the people, and the smoke was the breath of their prayers going to Wakan Tanka., the creator. The people learned of the connection between the sky and the earth and the unity of all life.
I am creating a red pot everyday as a meditation, on this established symbol and on creating a ritual of my own. Though this idea is taken from a traditional myth, applying it to my modern world, where I make these pots in a clay studio is extremely different. Because I'm choosing to coil these pots with earthenware clay, without any tools, I feel a connection to this ancient myth. But because I'm creating these pots in a studio where porcelian is abundant and in a society where mass produced vessels are also abundant, these forms are not nearly as utilitarian. I've already found I'm in love with the form and roughness of material because of what it symbolizes. Upon looking at the finished pots with my modern disconnected eyes they look like beginner's pots that I would have been embarrassed by. I'm going to update periodically this growing relationship I have with the aesthetic and spiritual developments in each pot. I also read today about the belief that a circle is the basis of all creation. Good thing I'm coiling.
A pot a day keeps the Dr. away.
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