My connection to you...
I read a post in a comment section on Etsy recently that this person had found pottery in a major store chain that was manufactured in China to look like it was handmade, complete with bumps and "wonky handles" as this person put it. It made me more convinced than ever that the beauty and value of truly handmade items in our daily lives will become increasingly sought after and valued as our global society becomes more automated. With the advent of evolving artificial intelligence and robotics, knowing that the items we surround ourselves with were actually touched by human hands may become a necessity for our emotional well-being. While I'm all for efficiency and strive to achieve it in some respects in my own daily practice, connecting and reconnecting to the things that center me to my true human nature take precedence. As we can find the mark of the hand in handmade objects around us, we can even discover it in prehistoric pottery and paintings on cave walls and marks on sandstone cliffs and thus we maintain a connection to our prehistoric ancestors.
Life is all about the
wabi-sabi, the perfection of imperfection.
Robotics and automation may be able to churn out mug after mug and may even try to incorporate fake flaws but they will never be able to connect to the act of living forms, the random bobbles and stumbles that influence our attempts to be perfect. A machine can achieve that repetition because it does not contain a true sentient life force. It is the human life force of our interconnectedness, our push and pull of energy and the subtleties of being influenced by those energies that guide the perfection of our imperfections. That thread of wabi-sabi travels through me and my hands as I am making work. You will see it in every piece I produce and that is my connection to you.
Keep it going.