Quantity

 "The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay." 

- from Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

image source: the Fukkura-San from East Fork pottery

I'm always inspired to make things after visiting Austin Kleon's Instagram or blog. He makes making things approachable, and I find myself vowing to take more notice of the things around me, turn scraps of paper into collages, or just get off of my phone and draw. Anyway, thanks to Kleon, the time I've spent perusing his blog today, and the fact that it is New Year's day, I've decided to start blogging again. I'm going to try my very best to blog every day of January. We will see how long this lasts, but I need more quantity in my life - more doing, less consuming (or at least more consuming that actually leads to doing). 

In searching for an image that fit this post, I looked through the amazing pottery of East Fork, a ceramic studio in Asheville I discovered on Instagram. I discovered this beautiful "Fukkura-San" cooking pot in the process and am fascinated. There are so many cooking methods that exist that I've never even heard of, and each new one I'm introduced to brings with it new recipes and flavors. 

Enter donabe, traditional Japanese earthen cookware, and the meals that come out of such cookware. I was convinced after reading the article, "Andrew Zimmern Extolls the Virtues of Japanese Meals-in-a-Bowl," to try to add more of this style of cooking to our lives this year (perhaps partially as an attempt to add more Japanese ceramics to our kitchen). Zimmern linked to the website TOIRO, which looks like a good resource to start from. I'm sure Japan will be a common theme in these posts - I'm finding endless inspiration from Japan lately. 

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