Figures

Last year I started making figures, and the fun I had making them was unreal. Most of the ceramicists in my year aren't all that fussed with the figure. Where the pot is like an invisible canvas that can hide and reveal as much domesticity as you like, the figure is so rooted in narrative and anatomy that it can feel passe. I love how potent the figure is, people react in a completley different way to figures than to pots.
I noticed the other day that whilst admiring someone's work I said 'Ooh, I like him!' meaning the pot. Perhaps it's my constant need to anthropomorphise things around me (I had an entire conversation with my coffee pot on Saturday morning, much in the style of Shirley Valentine) that means I love how right feeling a figure is.

And yet, some people who have transferred into the year below have started making some amazing figures, and I'll admit it, I feel sort of like they're infringing on my territory. I've been trying to make massive things, but we've not had a lot of clay and I've had to make little testers like the ones above. Yet these guys have dived in and made massive coiled figures and thrown figures and things I always fail at. I'll figure out how to do it, honest. But at the moment, I may never be able to make a life size figure, which is what I'm supposed to by the end of the year. I'm going to continue playing and toying and doing lots of other fun things. Maybe some day I'll figure out why I love the figure so much.