Reader: I was coming on with a bit of a cold as I wrote this, so it comes from a slightly more delusional space than usual. As the text progresses the fever takes me, I get more tired, more incoherent and ultimate entirely useless. Follow me into the abyss!
We begin of course with the perfect quote from You’ve Got Mail :
I launched my ceramic stationary this week in my shop and as we talked about pausing for grief last week, I thought it was appropriate that this week is about stationary. Like… being stationary. Eh? Eh?
For the Americans out there, in the UK, stationary refers to school supplies of any kind - pencils, highlighters, crisp lined notepads, sharpeners, strawberry scented erasers etc etc etc.
I took a hand building class at Still Life Ceramics in Los Angeles after Summer Camp ended as I wanted a very tactile hobby after working from home had been so digital. Also I figured if my hands were covered in clay, I could not use my computer. I remember driving home from the studio after one of my first classes and it felt like I was driving on soft rubbly clay. Everything felt more tactile and oh baby, I loved it.
When I wrapped summer camp I didn’t much feel like drawing, or doing much of everything (Note: I meant to write ‘anything’ here, but wrote ‘everything’ instead and I think my delirious brain is an artist).
Drawing my stationary:
And then sculpting it in clay:
Were the first sparks of joy that art brought me. If I could have only done that for the rest of my life I thought I would probably be happy, but I couldn’t find peace with how pointless it felt.
What I needed was not to give up on my tiny stationary still lifes, but just a change in perspective.
Everyone has always told me my work is very ‘cute.’ Though I don’t believe anyone ever intended it this way, to me I always heard it as a dig. ‘Cute’ felt dismissive. It made me feel like a teenager who thinks they’re making something very important and then you should it someone and they say ‘cute!’
We even made a Summer Camp episode about it called ‘Puff Paint.’ I wish I could link you to it here but so it goes!
Over time I started to see cuteness in my work as a strength. It can create a cosy space to explore darker subject matter and more complicated emotions. I often think of Gremlins as the perfect example of cute soft character design as a vessel for something darker. I love that juxtaposition.
Children’s books are another brilliant example of holding space for the cute and the complicated. And of course one must link the iconic conversations with Maurice Sendak and Terry Gross here.
A family member lent me David Hockney’s book ‘Spring Cannot be Cancelled’ during my period of drawing block. I have mentioned Hockney before as bringing me out of a period of existential boredom with his commentaries on the reason he makes art:
“Joy, he said instinctively, and then added that he hoped it would encourage them to look more closely at the world around them. In recent years, these things had come to summarize Hockney’s philosophy and his art: a positive celebration of life and the world around him through a close observation of, and delight in, even its most mundane details.”
Hockney has an affinity for painting the things in his house, and then hanging them up near the objects he has been painting:
Is there anything more satisfying than seeing the painting next to the thing you’ve been painting. I would argue no.
Hockney talks a lot in his book about perspective, and my muddled poorly brain is wants to say something profound about the change in perspective one can have about their work, with a literal change in perspective in a landscape.
Hockney mentions Claude Glass in the book, an object that painters used to reduce and simplify the colour and tonal range of landscapes to give them a more painterly quality:
To use it, painters would turn their back on the landscape and paint it from the reflection in the glass. In addition:
Tourists would carry a Claude glass in a case, as we would carry a digital camera today, with filters to see landscapes in miniature, made more beautiful in their reflection on a tinted surface.
I like the idea of people doing selfies in Claude Glass, but that might be my cold talking.
Much like Claude Glass slightly warps a landscape with its concave shape, Hockney has been known to paint things from multiple perspectives. He says that fixed perspectives give him claustrophobia and creating just one vanishing point tells the viewer where they have to look. I recommend minute 52 of this soothing Hockney video to get an idea of that illusion:
Hockney goes on to mention the painter Reinhardt and how he paints at the threshold of what the viewer can perceive, also known as the JND - Just Noticeable Difference. Exhibit A:
Blue, by Ad Reinhardt.
I’ll tell you what, reading up on JND with a cold near broke my brain. As far as I can tell, at its base level it means the space between an apple and a slightly heavier apple, or wind, and a slightly windier wind. You’d think I would have written this substack AFTER my cold had subsided but I really didn’t. I enjoyed reading this page on it, as it feels like such a charming corner of the psychology world. Here is a good example:
You dye your hair, but afterward, the color still looks the same as it was. This is because you dyed your hair a similar shade to what you already had, and the color isn't above the difference threshold.
Hockney pairs this idea of the HND with Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale ‘The Drop of Water.’ The story explores how everyone sees something different in the same small mundane thing, depending on their perspective. Here is Hockney discussing the story:
It’s about an old magician called Kribble-Krabble, who magnifies a drop of water from a puddle and colours it pink with a drop of wine, so all the little bacteria and creatures in it look like people. The moral is that this tiny world is a microcosm of the later, human one. Kribble-Krabble shows his dyed droplet to another magician, and asks him what he thinks it is.
“Why one can see that easily enough,” he replies. “That’s Paris, or some other great city, for they’re all alike. It’s a great city!’
“It's a drop of puddle water!’ says Kribble Krabble.
Here is my profound fluey thought of the day.
I had been stationary long enough, still in my depression long enough, that the first thing that sparked my attention on the climb back out was the things that had been stationary with me. My stationary.
Allowing the viewer to have autonomy around the angles with which they perceive a drawing made me more excited that I had made my drawings into sculptures.
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I also thought it was interesting that something that is usually so active - a pencil - was now essentially frozen in time. I could try to write with the led of this pencil but nothing would come out. This paint tube would always be mid squeeze.
OK I might need to go lie down. Be stationary. Be a piece of stationary.
Thank you for reading.
This past week I've been reading through this substack, and I think it's one of my new favorite things! I'm a big fan of the ceramic stationary as well, it's beautiful. Thanks for doing the work you do!
I want a ceramic pencil so so so bad 😭