Mark Making Mug

I got up in the middle of the night with this strong urge to carve. Not really about a final image, but a feeling of what my hands wanted to do. So I got up and carved this. In art school people talked about “being interested in mark making*” and I always thought that was pretentious. But there’s something soothing about making the same motion over and over - repetitive hand movements. Why knitting, coloring, all kinds of things are soothing. I find working with clay therapeutic, and it was soothing to do this just focused on the feeling, not with an image of how I wanted it to turn out.

Glaze notes: So far it’s saffron yellow and flame Speedball underglaze. After bisque, I want to fill in the carving spots with black or brown underglaze, then glaze the whole thing maybe with saffron glaze?

*Note: the only other time I heard this was daycare teachers talking about babies making art - just being interested in what it’s like to make a mark.