The Potters' Studio, Berkeley

Many years ago while living in Los Angeles I heard a writer tell a story about a little boy who got very mad at his mother when she punished him by taking away one of his toys. In a rage the little boy screamed, "I hate you, you fork, you knife, you spoon."

Walking around the Potters' Studio the other day reminded me of that story: that potters have their own way of seeing things and express this seeing in a visual language that is particular to each potter.

I'd come to the Potters' Studio in the morning to help set up for the big holiday sale. By 4 pm I had nothing much to do but kill time. I'm getting good at killing time. My only regret is that I didn't start killing time sooner in my life.

I talked with a woman about painting. A potter, she was now a painter. I could relate, a writer who was now painting. I said I liked painting because I didn't know what I was doing. She smiled, which I took to mean she agreed with me. She asked, "what kind of paintings do you make?' I said I made abstractions of actual objects, saying it like what I was doing had never been done before. She put her hands together and made a little bowing gesture. I realized a little later that I wanted to take back everything I'd said to her, but couldn't find her in the crowd.

Potters are primal, like god is primal, people who mess around with clay. Some of them are very serious, some aren't. I couldn't find any connection between a potter's seriousness or sense of humor and the quality of their work. Often, the serious potter's made funny work and the funny potter's made serious work. Some of them wanted to talk with me and some of them didn't, and some of them didn't even know I was there.

Walking around, looking at all the booths of the individual potters, I could tell the ones who were still experimenting and the ones who had settled on a style. It had nothing to do with age: some of the most experimental were the oldest, many of the most traditional the youngest. One potter had written a poem and had copies of the poem printed; she gave one to me for a $10 donation.

Another one of the potters, whose work I thought was so extraordinary as to be indescribable, was as much unlike her pieces as could be imagined--shy, monosyllabic, drab--the complete opposite of her fantastic art. When I approached her booth I could see the fear in her eyes. 

The party started at 6 pm. The music was good, really very good, 3 live bands, as was the food and drink: the food was free, donated by the potters and their friends, the drinks were $5 apiece.

At some point I saw Jerry, whose wife like mine is a potter. Jerry's a letterpress printer, a lover of poetry like me. Everytime we see one another we talk for a long time, but we only see one another once or twice a year. If I say to Jerry, "I still like the poems of Darrell Gray," Jerry knows exactly who and what I'm talking about. We talked up a storm while keeping watch on the growing crowd, seeing how much of it was so much younger but not saying a word about the age discrepancy.

It was just plain fun to watch the mostly young crowd eating and dancing and making eyes at one another. Jerry and I talked and watched for at least an hour. He told me about his trip to Spain and I told him about my recent detestation of The New Yorker magazine while we watched. At some point one of us said, 'maybe some of the people who are here tonight will wind up getting married.'

Then it was time for me to go. My feet hurt, all three of them, and my eyes were tired. My eyes had become little ceramic bowls, fired at cone-6 with a rare blue-gray glaze that can only be obtained at The Potters' Studio.