Bridges, Dana

equilibrium_ceramics

What motivates me as a ceramic artist is that I find healing and hope through making in clay. I am drawn to the medium for its earthy smell, organic feel, and the dialectical quality when it responds to my touch. Everything about clay grounds me and helps me live with my imperfect reality. I find healing from disappointments or failures in exploring play, growth, and integration of simple cup and bowl forms as well as repairing, recycling, and reforming materials. I find hope that breakages and mistakes in my own life can be presented as a challenge toward growth—as an opportunity to exercise acceptance, patience, and tenacity.

Since receiving an MFA in Visual Studies at Missouri State University a year and a half ago, my work and tools have been in storage. After relocating, I am finally on to the task of setting up my home studio in my garage. I am back at making my work with more capacity than ever.

I use just about every type of clay from low to high, from groggy to smooth, and white translucent or Mason-stained porcelain to Aardvark's Obsidian black. I use clay from many suppliers as well as clay I've mixed up myself in lab or naturally sourced.

Low, mid, and high in electric and gas environments.

I primarily begin with simple cup or bowl forms, either hand or wheel formed. Then, I slice or tear them open and integrate them in a way that seems fitting to me.

I have many that I use together, including bare clay, texture, and glaze. I love raw, unglazed surfaces of clay, so I leave half my mugs and sculptures bare. I expose additions in my clay by wiping off the outer clay.

I don't make my own tools, but I have been interested in trying the TPO material for throwing plates and platters on a bat. Also, I make my own aggregates from found and altered materials.

Interpersonal

I find a feeling of safety and agency within my studio that echoes my experiences creating in a creek next to my elementary school where I would create small pinch pots from the clay lining the banks.

My embossing heat gun. It is lightweight, fitting perfectly in my hands, and delivers just the right amount of heat to stiffen forms as I open and integrate them.

I hope the kilns I inherited from my husband's grandmother, mother-in-law, and the two kilns (electric and gas) I acquired from Facebook Marketplace work as intended. I have been incredibly blessed with tools to handle high capacity and am working to catch up with my studio capabilities (once functional). I had a career in education for seven years and invested in real estate, which allowed my husband and I the opportunity to become full-time artists. I know how incredibly blessed I am, though it feels a bit like the cart before the horse. My main hope is to make a modest, steady income within a year or two.

"How to Love Better", "Lighter", and "Clarity & Connection"  by Yung Pablo; "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck"  by Mark Manson; "Bluest Eye"  by Toni Morrison; "Making Kin Not Population: Reconceiving Generations" by Adale Clarke and Donna Haraway.

I don't. I spend wildly. I am mindful of clay resources and supply disruptions/shortages within the community. I save my scraps, re-wedge and reuse. The additions to my clay help stretch materials and reduce cracking, shrinkage, and warping in the kiln.

I spend time with family (husband and two kids) and friends. I read (of course about ceramics and art), but also about nature and gardening, rocks, education, climate justice, and such. I journal, sketch, and relax in a hammock in the backyard.

Any tips I have I have borrowed from another. But, my latest is using a portable plastic greenhouse as my wet/workable storage shelf.

Most immediately, I am focused on setting up my home-studio: electric to kilns, lighting, vents vented, and industrial sink installed with clay trap. I need to establish my LLC and all that business-ended stuff.

It was black with fluid curving lines. I threw a bunch of bowl-like forms, sliced into them, then reattached them. The curved planes of the bowl forms terminated in sharp points. The form was dynamic but not as refined.

Working faster like a studio potter. I would also love for someone else to do all my shipping for me.

I most want to learn how to take care of and service my kilns, how to effectively and efficiently fire a gas kiln with propane, and how to network with confidence, humility, and grace.

I do not currently have a ceramic mentor, but enjoyed connecting with Tim See and crew at the last NCECA conference I attended in 2023.

I listen to A LOT of podcasts while working: 5-4, The Cut, Cautionary Tales, Hidden Brain . . . the list could go on. I also LOVE music and listen to a broad range of styles. Lately it's been golden age hip-hop, Scottish indie, emo, and alt-country.

I make art because it makes life bearable and grounds me. I take a lot of pride and satisfaction in making something beautiful, even precious, from commonplace rubbish.

Ai Wei Wei, because he defies definition with fierce integrity, he is an icon of resistance and a celebration of human dignity and free will.

Just show up! Do something in your studio space every day, even if it's just daydreaming. The rest takes care of itself. Find a physical designated space, and show up.

The costliness of it. Then, not necessarily a property, but the problem of supply disruption and shortage.