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Melissa Ostrom Author

Melissa Ostrom is the author of The Beloved Wild and other writing

Paired, Turned, Fired

June 30, 2020 By Melissa Ostrom 9 Comments

Summertime is filled with the tasks I enjoy most. I live in Lake Ontario fruit country, where there are so many berries, cherries, peaches, and plums to do things with, bake into cakes, pies, and crisps, preserve or freeze. By August, I’m pickling cucumbers and canning tomatoes. Inevitably, at some point, a neighbor will leave a bag of zucchinis on the porch, and it’s a shame to let nice zucchinis go to waste. In the meantime, I have a writing project languishing, neglected. But the warmer months are also my pottery months. My studio isn’t heated, so I have to wait until the summer to throw and fire pots.

Last week, I did my first firings of the season. Almost all of the pots in these firings are mugs, and almost all of them, marbled. I’m on a marbled-mug kick and especially like the blue and white variety.

It’s easy to marble. I take a white clay body, usually porcelain, leave half of it pure, and wedge color into the other half: cobalt carbonate if I’m after that pristine blue, chromium oxide if I want an earthy green, or a combination of the two for a robin’s egg hue. Sometimes I’ll use a little red clay with the white. Whatever the combination, the potter’s wheel manages the veining of color. I simply slap the tinted and non-tinted clays together and throw the ball as I’d throw any ball of clay. The turns of the wheel-head bring about the marbling.

I should note that usually, even after trimming the pot, the marbling isn’t discernible. Bands of color don’t appear until after the pot’s been fired and the heat of the kiln has pulled out the pigment that was wedged into the white. After a glaze firing, I love to see how the wheel ended up marbling the juxtaposed clays. Sometimes one color will finely thread the other. Other times the tinted bands will come out as sweeping swaths, broken by strips of glossy cream. Opening a kiln after a glaze firing is exciting. Some potters compare it to Christmas morning. It’s a celebratory occasion, a holiday of surprises.

As different as pottery and writing are, they must tap a similar part of my brain. With both of these activities, I tend to forget myself and lose track of time. And though this might sound like a stretch, I think there are parallels between making a pot and telling a tale.

This marbling, for instance—taking two contrasting shades of clay, putting them together, and letting an external factor (the potter’s wheel) do the weaving work—makes me think of how two very different characters, when thrown into a situation together, generate an interesting story. The Misfit, the grandmother, and an empty stretch of road by a woods in O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The cynical Dmitri Dmitritch Gurov, the tenderhearted Anna Sergeyevna, and Yalta on the coast of the Black Sea in Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog.” The man with the gold convertible, Connie, and her empty house in Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” In each, a character appears. Life is disrupted.

And yet throwing two different colored clays on the wheel—or putting two very different characters together in a situation—doesn’t cut it. What’s necessary for the story to unfold is heat, fire: the crucible or test. A problem, perhaps springing from the fraught togetherness of conflicting/conflicted characters, must be posed. How will the protagonist answer it? Can she? What struggle will it entail? What choices? What actions?

I remember learning that somewhere in the Bible, God is compared to a potter. Picturing a laidback, ponytailed hippie kicking the potter’s wheel, I found the comparison funny. But upon closer examination, I guess there’s something to it, not so much because of the notion of humans being moldable lumps of clay on a divine wheel, but because of the fierce firings life deals us. They do sometimes seem like blistering blows delivered by a merciless and mighty hand.

Still, firings are necessary. A piece of pottery, no matter how exhaustingly crafted, won’t hold up without the heat. In fact, an unfired pot dropped into a bucket of water simply returns to malleable clay. Fire fixes the form, effects permanency. People aren’t so malleable either after getting burned. The warmth of happiness and love form us, but hot and harrowing hurt gives us that hard finish.

Literature is riddled with tense relationships and fiery trials. We read a story to see how a protagonist confronts, passes, or fails whatever test the situation foments. Sadism doesn’t draw us to these sufferings, but rather hope. We trust a character will endure. We know we’ll witness a transformation. And we will see affirmed what we long to believe: that change is possible. Change is survivable. Indeed, change can be beautiful.

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Comments

  1. Swati says

    July 1, 2020 at 10:33 am

    This is beautiful. And so are your cups.

    Reply
    • Melissa Ostrom says

      July 2, 2020 at 4:13 am

      Swati! Thank you so much, friend. I appreciate your kind words and support. 🙂

      Reply
  2. awmyth says

    July 1, 2020 at 2:46 pm

    Oh! So you do not know what the piece will look like till it has been fired. It is the wheel that decides. Has it happened when you write? Have you put characters together and let them spin by themselves, not knowing how it will turn out till it is finished?

    Reply
    • Melissa Ostrom says

      July 2, 2020 at 4:11 am

      This is such a great question, and yes, it does happen! My characters frequently surprise, delight, and disturb me. 🙂 I do, however, try to follow a loose plan for the story, and I always have a sense of how things must end. But the characters take many liberties in how they get there.

      Thank you so much for reading my post, friend, and for sharing it on Twitter, too!

      Reply
  3. Gina Harlow says

    July 2, 2020 at 6:31 am

    It is hope that draws us to stories, Melissa. I love this thought of the fire we must face and the beauty it reveals. My coffee will now be a daily reminder of it!

    Reply
    • Melissa Ostrom says

      July 3, 2020 at 4:56 am

      Gina! Thank you for reading my post–and for these kind words, too. It makes me so happy, picturing you drinking from one of my cups! xoxo

      Reply
  4. Charlotte says

    July 3, 2020 at 2:34 pm

    I love pottery so much yet know nothing about the process. This was so interesting! Your comparison to the pottery process and the writing process makes perfect sense. I saw your berry colanders on Twitter – they are gorgeous!! A combo of beauty and practicality, as is all of your pieces.

    Reply
    • Melissa Ostrom says

      July 3, 2020 at 7:31 pm

      Oh, Charlotte! Thank you for these sweet words–and for liking the pottery I share on Twitter! You’re very kind. xoxo

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Hot Reads for Hot Times – Zouxzoux says:
    July 3, 2020 at 8:15 pm

    […] Here, also, is a link to Melissa’s most recent blog post on her website. I really enjoy reading her insights about writing, pottery-making, life. Her most recent post about the comparisons between pottery and writing is very interesting. She creates gorgeous pottery in addition to gorgeous stories. […]

    Reply

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