FIELD OF INQUIRY    

Creative Research Journal
Transart PhD Program



I knew little what I was undertaking, and perhaps it was better not to have realized too many difficulties that would bar the way...As it was, I set to work, brave in the strength of ignorance of what was before me.

- Mary Louise McLaughlin, potter (1847-1932)



Journal Guidelines


7 A 24 A-B PROJECTS SHARD I 

First raku firing at the end of March. Trip to New Brighton to visit Terry and see UK spring into bloom before surgery May 7. First “Shards” session with Karl Burkheimer through A-B Projects. 

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The Rodina, Design Museum London, 2019


30-31 M 24 INTENSIVE

PhD March Session
COMMUNICATION DESIGN AS PERFORMATIVE WORLD-MAKING

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2nd week of March, the 150 with Lulu
15 M 24 JOURNAL

Misogyny and man-ness and misunderstanding, oh my.
With some Mary Poppins for good measure.

Read more764—39/23 
Doc—45456



capture/nature (1) summer 2023
28 F 24 JOURNAL

Advisory meeting with Tracey (2). Catch-up on percolations for revised PAF.  Research poetry, arts-based qualitative data-analysis - exciting to apply to Capture \ Nature project.

Read more764—39/23
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18 F 24 JOURNAL

Spore Space Gallery, Ojai
Lamp Show! July 2, 2023
Description of project & reflection.

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05 F 24 JOURNAL

Bed Island Day XXX. “Monster Storm.” Things I’ve made since I got the diagnosis, got the (first) surgery, got home from the mental and physical breakdown which was my holiday trip, and started getting out of bed, or off the chair.

Read more764—39/23
Doc—45456



05 F 24 
JOURNAL


SUBJECT:   ADHD / Black clay
REX-13: 978-0882681/283The first journal entry of the new year, in the second month. Confirmed the dates for the next surgeries, which won’t be at the end of this month, like I’d originally thought, but rather at the end of April and beginning of May. So I now will be taking off the spring quarter, and ostensibly have the next three months without teaching. Whether or not I am approved for partial leave from the program to continue to work on the journalism and Synthesis website projects is another matter. At this point, though, it doesn’t really make a difference - it’s a matter of figuring out what paperwork to push. And in the interim, I’ll keep working. Or something.

I made my way through the white stoneware clay I had stockpiled, and am back to black. I have a box of work that was bisqued way back in the early fall - summer? -and is waiting to be glazed, and a box - or two? - of greenware that needs to be bisqued. So plenty of work to work on.

Terry suggested I think about my claymaking creative process from a perspective of having ADHD, after I described how I have the TV on constantly while I am working. I prefer to have a series on, often in a foreign language (ideally French) and I’m not really watching the show, it’s just on, like a radio program. It maintains one level of my attention, like white noise, although I am following the storyline. If I could identify the location in my brain which is occupied, it would be the top front of my head. And then, there is this other layer of deeper attention that is making the piece. There is a visual component to the attention - I do look at the piece and notice what needs to be attended to, but the direction the piece wants to take, the way the clay wants to go, how dry or wet it is or what it needs in order to do what I want it to do - but what mostly drives the making is not visual. It comes from a tactile sensibility that I can feel in my hands even as I write this.

My mother used to have the TV on when she was in her studio, or even during the day when I’d come home from school unexpectedly and she’d be going about her chores. She’d watch the soaps, General Hospital or Days of Our Lives. She said they kept her company.

Music doesn’t work the same, it doesn’t capture my attention in the same way. And I can’t have music or TV on when I am writing. It has to be silent, except for a few albums or pieces of music, which are familiar and repetitive.

I don’t know if this is an ADHD thing. I do know that if I call it an ADHD thing, then I feel less like I’m just watching TV all day, and more like I’m facilitating my process. This is important. It is also different, very different, from what happens when I write.



I like these new pieces. I’m playing with two things - creating forms that are organic but functional, and working with the different clays to develop that folding / flustered edge technique.

I am excited to work with the black clay again, although I was a little reluctant to get back into it. The white clay is easy and smooth. The black clay has many limitations and constraints - but that’s what makes it interesting. And I am excited that I did all those experiments with it before, so now I have all this information about what it likes and what it doesn’t like. Which glazes do what. I am still enamored with the pinks and greens that come out.





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