On Monticello, and the studio garden
On Monticello, and the studio garden.
The studio is in Monticello, a small old neighborhood on the near-northwest side of San Antonio. The streets have long porches and live oaks and houses that were built before the city had decided what kind of city it wanted to be. We picked it for the same reason most working artists pick a neighborhood, which is rent and light and quiet, and stayed for reasons that have to do with the garden.
The garden has two water fountains and a lily pond. The fountains were here when we got here; the lily pond was planted in. None of them are large. The pond is the kind a child could step across if they were careful, and the lilies bloom in the spring in a color that is exactly the color of a celadon pulled from the kiln on a warm day. The fountains are the kind that drip; they are not the kind that throw water. Together the three of them make a sound that the studio likes to listen to while it works, which is a small thing to admit out loud but is true.
The pieces leave the studio in two directions. Some go to Mockingbird Handprints in Olmos Park, where Jane shows them with other regional work. Some leave through the front door, by appointment, with the person who has come to look. A small number of the garden pieces, the frogs and the planters in particular, stay outside in the garden for a while before they go anywhere. They keep the lily pond company. They get used to weather. They learn what a hand-built ceramic piece looks like at six in the morning when the dew is still on the bricks, which is information the studio uses next time it builds one.
The fountains are the kind that drip; they are not the kind that throw water.
There is a small honest reason the neighborhood matters to the work. The clay we use is heavy. The kiln runs warm. Hand-building a piece takes longer than throwing one; firing it takes longer than glazing it. By the end of a piece you have spent more time with it than most people spend with anything they own. Where you do that work shows up in the work, the same way the place a writer writes from shows up in the sentences. Monticello is a place where it is fine to take a long time on a small thing. The block agrees with the pace.
A visitor who comes to the studio sees all of this without being told. The fountains drip; the lilies, if it is spring, are open; the kiln is either at rest or working its way up. The pieces in progress sit on a wood shelf by the bench. The finished pieces are usually outside on the patio, lined up to be photographed in real light. The lily pond is the lily pond. Shouganai.
