I hate Ceramics. SOME SERIOUS PERSONAL SHIT HERE be warned

I hate ceramics

I have gone off slip casting and I have lost all enthusiasm for ceramics in general.

I enjoyed the last month of the module, after discovering my own creativity.

Until then I had been making bottles that looked nice and people would think were pleasing to the eye but they were safe and plain and would have blended in with a hundred other ceramic bottles in a room and no one would have looked twice at them. Basically they were boring. I was making things for others I think which I was always going to get bored of in the end.

After this little personal revelation I dug a little deeper into my reasons for the bottle shape, the reason I loved the ‘idea’ of Norway (home, comfort, security etc etc) and it all snapped into place. I wanted to bring my childhood back.

My love for my childhood home, my Granddad and my young life is still such an important part of my present life that I think about it constantly.

I dream about it EVERY single night, I cry whenever I think about it for too long and it influences every single thing I do. Even down to my doing this degree, my Granddad was a woodturner and I used to spend hours and hours with him making whatever I wanted in his enormous workshop. He would let my 5/6/7/8/9 year old self use the bandsaw, the lathe, the sander and the drills, I would bang together bits of wood to make weird and crazy sculptures, I would go into the forest and collect things to add on to these pieces of ‘work’ and all with not one single criticism or question from my Granddad. Just a watchful eye and praise.

In between our making our creations we would play in the pond, collecting frogs and newts, and making little worlds for them to crawl around in, we would play french cricket or tennis on one of the lawns and would make dens and play hide and seek, or I would help my Granddad with the constantly smoking bonfire by the vegetable patch.

Basically my Granddad and his and my Nanny’s house ‘Gosfield’ was like a dream. It’s hard to imagine that it really happened now, my Granddad died 13 years ago, my Nanny sold the house now all I have are the memories and dreams.

I sometimes wonder if I should go back there and look in to the garden or play in the forest with Beau but I don’t want to, it would be too sad.

It’s like a magical place now that has become more magical in my dreams, to me now it is like a fairy tale filled with all my happiness and I think I left it there as I don’t think I have been happy since then.

I want to make my 3D work for me now, not to make a product I can sell or design something to please other people. So I am going to make stuff to make me happy. I will create things from my dreams, I will draw my imagination and I will turn my childhood and my longing for my old life, into something that is in the present and I can be happy now about.

I’m kind of going to use this as therapy and perhaps I will stop dreaming about Gosfield and start living in the now, and be happy.