Weighing of Balance, in clay

(This post was written in September.  For some reason it sat around being a Draft.  So I will post it now.  For balance and completion.)

Weighing of Balance

                                   

                                   I must find balance somewhere

                                   between solitude and communion

                                   between retreat and return.

                                  ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

This particular piece came out just as I wanted it, until...It didn't.  Oddness is where many of my pieces end up.  Some are stressed with beauty, others humorous and too endearing. They sit on the shelf waiting for identity, for want and need of insight and completion.  This piece did not use up any contemplation on my part.  It just became who it is, what it is. Some will find it misinformed, even a bit deformed with its heavy, wide brow and counterbalanced with elephantine ears.  

 

Somehow I could not change what its face is now, marked and pitted, absurdity and harmony all rolled up in a smile.   That is how I look when at one moment I pause to think if I need to do one more thing, add one more bit of clay, would that change a piece from raw to flawed? The weight of clay does that to me. There is always that question of balance.  It just needed one more thing.  That little bit of clay needed a golden shine.

Weight of Balance, ceramic, glazes, fired-on wire, Charlene Doiron Reinhart

 Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
         Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

                                                                                    ~John Keats 

Weight of Balance, ceramic, glazes, wire, 23kt gold leaf, Charlene Doiron Reinhart