Imaginations come and go, the art is to recognize and preserve the Ceraminations . They are the ceramist’s treasure trove. Maybe not immediately, but after ripening they are worth their weight in gold, just like a good cheese…
Modern life is surrounded by all kinds of information flows. Books, social media, events and interactions: with Frodo (my parrot), my girlfriend, fellow ceramists and students. What happens to all that input?
With me it always comes out one way or another (rehashed). When I’m working, whether it’s preparing a (glaze) lesson, a ceramics blog or with my hands in the clay, small thoughts jumping around.
Sometimes everyday thoughts (is the garbage picked up today?), sometimes specific (making a series of pots in geometry of the molecules that clay is made up from?).
How do you keep all those references and perhaps (after maturation) valuable Ceraminations?
The art of taking notes
Since I have been making ceramics, I have made countless notebooks with sketches and notes. From the moment I glazed and fired my first ceramics, I started keeping logs , recording firing procedures, etc.
When I started writing ceramics blogs ten years ago, I also started looking for better ways to capture ideas and references digitally. So that I could immediately write down ideas that bubbled up along the way on my phone .
Keep, One note, Evernote, Journey, Todoist, Tasks, To Do, Trello, etc., etc. all tried. And I still use a few for my Ceraminations . So I’m not completely unfamiliar with this… I thought.
But recently I read a blog about taking notes (the Konik method), which almost knocked me back. This was “note taking” 3.0. I still have a lot to learn.
Ceraminations: just like life
That’s one of the things I learned working with clay. There is so much to learn! So much knowledge to organize, to refer, to write down and to look up again “when the times arrives”.
Making ceramics is just like “real life”. That’s just such a ceraminations that I had the other day… uh… but where did I write that down 🙂
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