Editor's Note: Rabbit Hole Holly Goring
Appears in the Sept/Oct 2018 issue of Pottery Making Illustrated.
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Editor's Note
In the Potter's Kitchen
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I unabashedly admit to the following guilty pleasure: taking a break from work, scrolling through my Instagram feed, clicking a post, then another, and another, suddenly it’s a half hour later and much like Alice, I’ve been falling with no clear destination and all sorts of strange things flashing past me. The social media rabbit hole is both a gift and curse—often getting a bad rap for wasting our time with shallow pursuits. On the other hand, the rabbit hole can also be a conduit to a fantastical land of both great discovery and extreme distraction from daily stress.
In his book Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll wrote, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” The modern idea of the rabbit hole no longer has a bound for Wonderland, but rather we’re in a long free fall with no clear destination—but we do know when we have arrived. My intentions with sites such as Esty, Pinterest, and Instagram are not only to get lost or distracted, but rather to find new artists to showcase in the magazine. The best way to do that is to intentionally fall down a rabbit hole, chasing one post and tag after another. I’ve discovered more amazing artists this way than any other.
How does this metaphor relate to this issue of the magazine you wonder? I fell down a rabbit hole, of course. I have saved a set of my parent’s old bed sheets because I love the pattern on them. One day I decided to search online for similar patterns to explore in the studio. That brought me to arist Leah Duncan’s website of similar fabrics, then to her Etsy page, which then led me to Catie Miller’s Etsy page, and finally to her Instagram page, where I discovered the post in the screenshot above. I loved that Catie was creating surfaces inspired by her grandmother’s sheets. I saved that screenshot and recently decided to contact her and ask if she would share her process with you. She agreed and you can learn how she put her grandma’s sheet patterns on her functional wares (see page 22).
For all the Alices out there, I hope you can find a way to turn your guilty pleasure into research and show the world that falling feels more like leaping!
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