Forays in Clay

This was the year where I decided that any whims I had, I would follow them and see them through as much as possible.

One of them was wheel throwing pottery.

The class has just ended and this is what I came out with:

The pieces are nowhere near perfect, full of flaws, but I feel like I'll look back on these objects and enjoy all the misshapen bits about them.

I had always kind of looked at pottery with a bit of disdain. Everything that I saw that came out of pottery looked handmade in a really unbearably hippie way. But more and more people around me tried it out, kind of enjoyed it, and it was like, okay, I want to try this.

I was told that wheel throwing is a lot harder than it looks. I didn't believe anyone that told me this. How could something so calm and fluid be so hard. Also I couldn't quite take wheel throwing seriously at first slightly because of how phallic it was (grow up Ellen).

But oh my gosh it is/was so unbelievably hard. I didn't have anything for literally the first 4 weeks of class. There were moments where I was at the wheel, completely undone by a mound of clay and just wanting to cry or fall apart or somehow magically dissolve into air and never come back to class. I dreaded going to pottery at first because I would look like that idiot at the wheel who wouldn't make anything yet again. It was a reminder that the easier something looks, it means that there is an incredible amount of unseen effort behind it to make it as effortless as it seems.

The teacher had watched me and said that my actions towards the clay were quite 'gestural'. I kind of knew what he meant. And it made me kind of sad. Because he was completely right. I did all the same movements as him, but I wasn't actually doing them (if that makes sense). And it made me realize that if I want this class to work for me and to come out with SOMETHING, then I was going to have to put in more effort than I would have liked. And that was another thing that I learned (as anyone who does pottery knows, there are a bajillion metaphors in this craft that can be applied to life) - you can go through the motions, but you aren't really going to get anything out of it - you've got to bring your complete self if anything is going to happen.

I had signed up for pottery because I thought it would be a chill time where I would just hang out, throw some cups, plates, bowls, whatever and paint them nice colors. But no, it's not like that. At least not at first.

I can't tell you enough how satisfying it was when I actually somewhat sort of centered a mound of clay and made it into a cylinder. The amount of focus I had to put into it, it was a feeling I hadn't felt in ages, where everything inside and around me fell quiet. And that's one of the things that I wanted, to find a sense of calm where I am not affected by what's around me. Earlier in the process I couldn't help but feel people were looking at me all the time and seeing how hard I was struggling and how awful I looked, I was incredibly self conscious.

Now I want to be at pottery ALL THE TIME! Seriously! I love every part of the process - the wedging of the clay, centering it, making it into the desired shape, trimming it, glazing it. Oh my gosh! It's nice because normally I hate certain parts of other things that I do. Pottery is also something where I am happy just creating and making thing after thing after thing, and not really having it go anywhere. When I am painting or drawing or designing, I think about where it will end up, if I can sell it, etc. But with pottery, I am just perfectly happy that I am making things and that they exist (pssstt - friends, I will be pushing tons of my pottery onto you, you're forewarned! And also, don't be dismayed by what you see here, I'm improving, I swear!) I guess maybe I really see what I make in pottery as examples of kind of what I was thinking at the time, and I am just kind of glad that they've taken physical forms.

Speaking of which:

So this is the second piece I've ever made (the first one was so awful that I can't even look at it - I finished it just to have that satisfaction of completing something in the class and gaining momentum to make more). You can see in this 'cup' that I still could not center a piece of clay to save my life. That I probably picked it up when it was still wet and accidentally added dents in it (that actually and wonderfully make it nice for holding). And that I kind of painted it without thinking. But oh man. Do I ever love this uneven lopsided thing.

At the very least.

So here begins my foray into seeing what I can do with my hands.

I took a moccasin making workshop over at Blim last weekend, kind of on a whim, I saw it randomly, thought it was cool and signed up right away. We didn't really get much done in the class, only a 1/4 of one shoe in 4 hours! (When I signed up, I thought 4 hours was way too long, psh). When I got home, I was obsessed and couldn't stop working on them until I was finished. My hands were in pain (pushing a small needle through leather many, many times takes its toll) but I just couldn't stop. Moccasin making is tedious, it's just making sure you poke a bunch of holes your thread can go through and sewing it altogether. But it was enjoyable and I have a new appreciation for shoe making and I totally understand why Daniel Day Lewis went to be an apprentice for a shoemaker in Italy, I would/want to do the same thing.

I am also learning how to sew. I successfully made throw pillows (I CAN SEW A STRAIGHT LINE NOW! I was elated when I did this, because until then, I was hopeless with a sewing machine). I can't tell you enough how nice it is to learn a new skill, even if it's small and almost a given/basic to some people - because at the very least, you know something new, even if it's not immediately useful and beneficial.

Awhile ago I had this urge to go into Loomis and I somehow ended up at the discount bin for wooden beads and was like, oh cool, let's buy these and paint them. And here they are:


Ones I really like:



And my most favorite:

When I was painting these, I was like, man, what am I doing painting beads for. And it felt kind of dumb. But seeing them altogether, it's like, oh Ellen you're so hard on yourself and if painting beads makes you happy, then that's okay.

Because at the very least, they're pretty things to look at.

And I like this whole having whims and pursuing them thing.

past collections.

I forgot to mention (or just left out) that last week another sort of (in my mind) big thing that I did was give up my CD collection.

My CD collection is at the foot of my bed and I see it all the time, and when I really begin to look at it, I just see it as taking up space and not really doing much of anything. I go through these fits of getting rid of as many of my possessions as I possibly can. Usually it's clothes and knick knacks from impulsive Value Village purchases, but this time it was the CDs.

I haven't listened to any of those CDs that were sitting on my shelf for years. My CD player is hideous, but indicative of my past (in a really nice way, that is only nice to me because it is mine), decorated with like (lol) Moneen and Napolean Dynamite stickers (lol, which I was so proud of at the time because I got them from a free screening, which up until that point, I had never experienced one and was amazed that they existed and that I got to go to one...and to receive...merchandise!) And the CDs just weren't a way of showing how I valued things anymore. Not the way that they used to. CDs meant a lot to me during high school, it was (and I know this is so obvious), one of my strongest connections to music and really set the foundation for how I approached music as well. To be open to new things and to put a value on music. And I still do value music, very much so, but I don't need to buy and own CDs anymore to prove that to myself.

At first it was easy putting a lot of the CDs in the box, but then there were some that were admittedly really tough and I felt this sinking, dizzying feeling because I felt like I was somehow betraying my relationship to music, the artist, and my past self (who would have died at the thought of me giving up these CDs, it never really made sense to me when "adults" said they weren't into music anymore and I would kind of...scoff in disbelief). But my computer was being really retarded (I was transferring the music from the CDs onto my computer) and was getting me really annoyed and put me in a very "fuck it" attitude, and I put those more nostalgically important CDs in the box thoughtlessly out of wanting to get over my frustration. And looking back on it, I am fine, and I think I was just kind of sad about that somehow these songs, and all the values, feelings and memories that came with them would be gone the instant they were in the box and no longer in my possession. And you know, that's not true.

I gave them to a record store. And the guy who was looking at them made small talk and asked if I was giving up my collection, and I said yes, and he's like, are you putting them all on your computer? And I felt kind of awkward because it's a local music store, and I said yes...and went on to ask if it made him sad to see people giving up their CD collections. And he looked like he really didn't care and was like, no. They took most of it, but there were some albums that they didn't end up taking, and I have to say, I was kind of choked, because some of those albums meant so much to me at one point and had such nostalgic value and sentiment tied up in them and the place I ended up putting them (sigh), was the Salvation Army.

When I was cleaning up my CDs, this was what I found in one of those albums that was the most important to me:

This is the album it was in:

I'll tell you the significance of each thing.

I would say Rilo Kiley is the first band that made music truly fulfilling to me, that showed me that it could truly express what I was feeling and to also overwhelm and complete me at the same time. This album opened up wanting more from music and knowing that I could get it if I just looked hard enough and spent time with it. And with all this came this sort of independence, of coming of age, by making these decisions in taste and defining who you are through choosing what you loved and spent time with. There's just also a bunch of all that teenage stuff tied up in this album, unrequited love, being a typically angry teenager, it was my soundtrack.

The fortune cookie fortunes...if you know me, I put a lot of value into signs - (no one will believe this) - but less so now. I had gotten like insanely drunk at this party and tried to tell this guy who I had a crush on for ages that I did, and got rejected, and of course was insanely bummed out, like (oh god), crying on the lawn kind of thing (overly dramatic person), and my family and I went for Chinese the night after, and those were the fortunes I got. My family and I went to San Francisco the day after and I really didn't expect much from it because I was so consumed with my awful "love life", but it ended up being such a great trip (lol, saw Sonic Youth play and got hit on by A COLLEGE GUY, that was the height of my flattery, but even if that hadn't had happened, the trip would still have been good). That trip also made it clear to me that I wanted to pursue a career in art (lol), and go to art school (not as...lol). I felt like I was at the right place at the right time, and I kind of got over the things I was sad about before I left (lol, as a teenager should) and just felt, as cheesy as the word sounds, but it is true -healed. And I kept that fortune as a reminder that when things go shitty, things get better afterwards (and this of course, is a revelation as a teenager, you always felt like when things went wrong, that things were over, and in a way they are, but of course, something replaces it, you just don't realize it at the time). And I put it in the place that was most important to me to solidify that experience that was so new to me at the time, but is part of growing up.

And this is kind of part of it as well. A small part, and I just wanted to remember it and document it as well as I could.

undeniable.

I feel like I haven't done personal work in a long while. I always want to and felt like it but could never really bring myself to do it. It's like when you feel like talking and you want to have a great conversation but you have nothing to say. Or you really feel like cooking but you can only find shitty non-interesting recipes. Or you want to read a really good book but everything seems boring and long. Or you want to see a really good movie but you've seen a lot of the good movies and begin to get indecisive with the amount of choice thereafter (mystery, drama, romance, comedy, sci fi, and so on). I am hoping that while all this wanting and then not doing anything, that even though I'm not doing something, that I'm at least absorbing whatever is happening so that when it finally comes time that I make something, eat something, read something, watching something, talk about something, that it is somewhat informed and fulfilling and if I am lucky, meaningful.

I've also had a hard time with the idea of making stuff. Where does it all end up, what's the point, etc, etc. And I still have a hard time with it and maybe that's part of the satisfying thing of making something of your own, working through these personal misgivings and at least coming out with something. Something that is yours.

And this here, is mine.

five full seconds.

Phew March.

This month was moving along at a pretty...slow pace and then all of the sudden things have gotten very busy. At times I feel like a chicken running around with my head cut off, but I am grateful for not sleeping in until 12pm and then spending an hour to figure out what to do with my day. I don't do well with that amount of time on my hands.

I've also always felt that I am better in the Spring. I always feel like I make most of mistakes, am at my worst in the fall and winter, and then somehow Spring always works out for me. Maybe that's why it's my favorite season. And also the air smells nice.

One thing that kept me busy this past weekend (for Straw):




Holy crap those circles for the tops killed my hands to do. I made it so hard for myself and there were moments where I just held the little labels in my hand and just wished it would just unstick itself. But I'm not a wizard, so oh well.

At the beginning of this month I watched...hahaha 3 seasons of Lost straight (I had lots of time as explained before). And there was this part where one of the characters, Jack, a spinal surgeon, was telling this other character Kate about this time where he was doing surgery on a patient and he screwed up really bad. He was scared, and he said to himself that he will give himself 5 seconds to let the fear completely envelope him and when those 5 seconds are up, to get back to what he is doing. I have been thinking about that a lot lately. Not just in terms of fear, but in any sort of extreme negative emotion, like boredom, annoyance, being tired. I think it's a good way of putting things behind you, letting everything hit you for a brief amount of time in order to move on. Because people and things need you to get on with things, you need yourself to get on with things.

Anyways.

Hi April, nice to see you.

expectations.

Everything and nothing to say.
You know?

So I am now officially 22 and it was the first birthday in a long time or possibly ever where I didn't really make much of a big deal of it in my head. I always feel kind of shitty or insanely slummy on my birthday because no matter how hard I try, I have expectations and they are always unmet or unfulfilled and the day ends up feeling so anti climatic and I have all these self-loathing feelings for acting like such a big spoiled kid. I'd have such conflicting feelings, I would want to stay in bed and not talk to anyone but to also be out doing significant meaningful things and say hi to everyone and have everyone say hi to me and eat cake. But this year was different, everything felt fine, things felt okay and there were pleasant surprises (small things) that left me more than fulfilled.

I have been thinking about expectations, and how having them sometimes leads to disappointment. I started thinking that maybe you shouldn't go into anything with expectations, or if you do, to have some pretty low ones. Then I was reading a tv review in the metro and the reviewer said something to the effect of, "This show will be enjoyable if you have low expectations." And seeing that in print and reading it, that idea of having to have to have low expectations in order to enjoy something just suddenly seemed so retaaaarded. It sounded like such a cop out, that the show would be excusable if you kind of turned off your mind and your thinking and your questioning, the things that makes things more interesting, more meaningful, less shitty. If you have to have low expectations for something, you probably shouldn't even be bothering with it anyways . It's better then to have appropriate expectations, reasonable expectations, and they can be seen as high or low, but they are specific to the situation, its context, and I think that leads to better feelings.

I think at least.

big metaphors

A really satisfying feeling:
When you lost a sneeze, and regained it 5 seconds later. Or when you know when a sneeze is coming and and you feel and define every moment leading up to and ending in it.

Brief Summation

Calgary 2008/09:










dogs need to hug pillows too.






homemade baked doughnuts. Of which my mom did the most work. They taste more bread like than cake-y.




























I really like what this girl, Hannah, did: The Rulebook for my Unborn Daughter, which was inspired by 1001 Rules For my Unborn Son, which I also enjoyed. One I like: Rule #293-Don't shout out requests at rock shows.

big love.

So it started with dessert.

I wanted to try out a dessert place in a sort of cute area in Calgary called Inglewood and I wanted to know what other businesses were around it to see if there was anything else interesting to see. When in Calgary, if I leave my parent's home in the suburbs, I want to cram as much stuff into one day as possible, the house is far from things, and it takes a lot more motivation and effort to get out and do something (the suburbs make you insanely lazy or insanely busy). There are a couple of graphic design firms in Inglewood, Foundry Creative and Fulcrum Communications. I looked through Foundry Creative's website, and I thought the work was pretty good, especially for Calgary and I also liked the fact that it was founded by 3 women. Then I got curious about other graphic design studios in Calgary and there are a good handful. Most of the work is definitely good and I started entertaining the idea that Calgary might be an okay place to come back to to continue my career in graphic design, because it seemed almost as good, comparable to the work found in Vancouver, and then it hit me. It kind of looked the same. I don't mean this in a bad way. Then I realized, if I am going to produce work in Calgary that is comparable to that found in Vancouver, why should I stay in Calgary? Why not aim for the best place possible, like New York, San Francisco, somewhere awesome in Europe. What I am trying to remind myself here is that I don't have to settle for a place like Calgary. Although it has its interesting points, places, people, events, and it is on the brink of huge development in just about everything, it is not a place I feel totally compelled to stay in, it only makes me dream of ways to get better and to get out to better places, and I think that's how it'll be for a long time.

Then again, maybe I should actually experience working in Calgary before I start making all these assumptions. But it kind of feels like it might be a slight waste of time, that I should just go ahead and go to the big places while I am still new, inexperienced, and curious. And one time Jane and I had talked to a creative director at Hangar 18, Sean Carter, and he was saying that it is preferable to hire young designers fresh out of University because they are easier to mentor and mold into a designer that will work well for their firm. It made me realize that I have to get a pretty good idea of what kind of designer I want to be and how to get there, and that means choosing good places to work. I know that is obvious, but I could feel myself making some compromises in my head as to where I should work because of my fears and whatnot.

With graduation approaching, I am starting to process what kind of city I want to work and live in. One that I feel like I belong to, that I understand, and that I can be happy in. And Calgary could definitely do that for me because it has my family, my friends, spaces that hold strong memories, many of my first experiences and failures, and big hope. But I remember one time, when I was 16, that my family and I went to San Francisco, only for a week, but the instant I was there, it felt completely right, I felt completely free, and it helped me define what I wanted from life and how I could do it and the hope and will to do it.

And I want that.

#7

Top: Grant Achatz, photo from Town and Country Travel Magazine. Bottom: Eric Ripert from Metrocurean.


Two chefs that I have fallen in love with:
Grant Achatz and Eric Ripert



Photo from The New York Times

I had first seen Eric Ripert as a guest judge in the reality competition show, Top Chef. Aside from enjoying his french accent and his tallness, I enjoy his mannerisms, and the way he judged food and to me he just seemed to have a kind heart, which I enjoy in people. Plus he looks absolutely unreal! Silver hair and a perfectly tanned face!

Recently I was reading about Anthony Bourdain and Ripert is one of the few chefs he admired and that was interesting to me because Bourdain seems to hate more people than he likes. Or he seems to make fun of everything and everyone. Then I saw this video:



Where Bourdain thought it would be hilarious if him and Ripert worked on the cooking line at Bourdain's restaurant Les Halles for one night, something neither of them have done in a long time due to their celebrity status and position of head chef. It was nice to see their interactions and how Ripert seem to keep his cool the entire time under such stressful conditions, and he did it with such elegance that it almost seemed easy.

Also he has his own personal blog which has the cutest url: http://www.aveceric.com. Oh come on, Avec Eric! Adorable.



Photo from Current

One of my favorite shows on the Food Network is called, At the Table With. The show is half an hour long and it features one chef, their biography, interviews with the said chef, and interviews with other chefs and family and critics. I love it because it introduces you to chefs you've vaguely heard about, and it gives them a bit more depth and insight as to how they got to their position. Although it is slightly superficial, it is better than Wikipedia.

Anyways. So there was an episode about Grant Achatz. What is fascinating about Grant Achatz is that his approach to food is molecular gastronomy, meaning he uses gadgets like grills that freeze rather than heat and nitrogen (or something) to create ice cream and such. Molecular Gastronomy is a very cool thing and it pushes the bounds of how food should be cooked, but I am a bit weary of it because it has the stigma of science to me. I feel a bit old fashioned when I say things like that and it reminds me of how my instructor Clément Vincent said that chefs are not actually very innovative, but very traditional. It takes a scientist or sometimes people outside of the cooking world that change the rules of food. It made me think of this show I was watching on the Food Network, The Food Network Challenge, where the competitors had to make the best ice cream concoctions. One of the competitors used nitrogen (or some sort of chemical) to create his ice cream, rather than doing the good old chilling, churning way. And the judges just seemed so hesitant about it in a really closed-minded manner, they kept dissing it, saying how it had too many ice crystals, it doesn't taste home-y enough, blah blah. I think it was just an excuse and that they might have been scared of admitting that this competitor's way was pretty good because it isn't the way they're used to. And I think that's the thing with food, once you've found that good way, why bother changing it? Think about when you go to a restaurant, when you've found that one thing you've liked, you tend to order it every time you go to that restaurant, and you're a bit scared to try another thing because you're worried it might not be as good as the thing you usually get. I know there are factors involved in this, like that maybe you don't go out that often and you wanna stick with what you know so as to ensure value, or maybe you go to a a certain restaurant to get that certain thing. But what about this, your mom makes lasagna a certain way, and you get so used to it or you've fallen in love with it, that no other way really compares, and plus, no one really wants to diss their mom, cause well it's your mom. And food is a thing that is so close to us, that goes inside of us, we don't really want to experiment with it in the sense of creating it through chemical or unnatural ways because there are possible risks involved, it's too much of an experiment.

What is even more interesting and compelling about Grant Achatz is that he had cancer...in his mouth. It got so bad that the doctor said he had to cut out his tongue our or die, which Achatz refused to do. He went through radiation and chemotherapy instead, which was successful in getting rid of the cancer, but in the process, eliminated his sense of taste. You can read a more in depth article with better sentence structure and vocabulary by the New Yorker here. And all the while, Achatz still went to work, and he still cooked, without his sense of taste, and what he realized was that food is really based on memory. I think this really helped informed his vision of what his food is about, evoking memories in people. He has crazy presentations for his food, such as dishes accompanied by burning oak leaves to remind you of when you were a teenager and had to rake the leaves in the front of the house, and jumping into them and possibly setting them on fire.


Photo from Wired Next Fest

In one of the Industrial Design presentations this year at Emily Carr University, Hamza Vora had presented a eating set he made, called Moon Shell. It was basically a bowl, with a little plate on top of it that had little holes to allow steam to travel to what is on the plate, and then a lid to cover the whole thing. He had also created unconventional utensils, a spoon straw and tweezer like thing. One of the instructors, Clément Vincent had commented that what was interesting about Vora's project was that he had designed something that a chef would have to create a dish around, rather than Hamza creating a dish that would fit something a chef already made. It is creating a different collaboration, and possibly pushing the bounds of how food should be made. This is what Grant Achatz is doing with an engineer (or something or another), his engineer comes up with weird tools such as smoke gun that Achatz then creates a dish around. Also Achatz comes to this engineer with ideas of new tools that he wants. Also, Achatz needed new utensils and dishes for his food, and went to a person for that as well.

As great as Achatz is though, he has some major flaws as well, like treating his body really poorly. In the New Yorker article, it was mentioned that Achatz, prior to getting cancer would drink a buttload of Diet Cokes a day and get very little sleep. He pushed his body really hard because I guess he was really obsessed with his work. He is also very serious and to me, can sometimes come off as a bit insensitive, but he does show these moments of human-ness, like when he laughs or says something that is actually quite...sensitive, and it makes him pretty endearing, such as that he enjoys Harry Potter and if he could cook for anyone, dead, it would be John Lennon, and living, his two boys.

So in this vein of cooking, I helped my mom frost cookies the other day. hahaha.

My favorite ones:












(actually my mom did this one, but isn't it pretty!)

And my mom got me this weird book that was written by her co-worker or her co-worker's wife:


the note inside:



And to you: Enlightement and Beyond!
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!