So....I am trying to figure out what ritual is to me. I feel like anything that could remotely indicate a ritual is more a habit, routine or compulsion. Everything from making coffee in the morning, to how i get from place to place, what I eat and brushing my teeth seem like conditioned activities not ritual.

Ritual seems like something that indicates a mystery, or a fear of not being able to fulfill an action without another action. Maybe it is my doubt in a higher being that takes away my need or belief in ritual. Ritual always seems to be associated with ceremony and rites of passage. For me it reminds me of being an alter boy, and seeing the Catholic mass from right beside the alter, that is ritual. It seems to have been lost in our world.

I don't know what it is to me, maybe it is what is missing. Maybe it is time to create my own rituals that allow me to enter a different state of being or fulfill an unknown need within me? Some times I think it might just begin with believing in something inside of yourself.

The process begins with food.........mushroom cheddar omelets for breakfast and slow cooked yankee pot roast for dinner...mmmmmmmmm.....then work

Dreams about Kilns, large and small, gas and electric...............oh how I love thee!

Process? Pretty much sums up every portion of our daily lives if you think about it. For everyone of us it is different, leads to different outcomes, fulfilling or not. In art it is inherent, the object can not come to exist without it. Regardless of the medium, if it is "craft" or "fine art", the process is individual and unique.

I have been thinking about where it begins for me. It is hard to be sure because the beginnings of new things always seem to come from the endings of the old. I think maybe it comes from my interactions and observations throughout the day. They seem to trigger these things that I only feel briefly before falling asleep at night. Which translate into images and objects, lines and curves, shapes and volume.

For me the process itself is still about the creation of an object. The endpoint. That is regardless of the success or failure of the object its self. Usually by the time I am finished the object means very little, it is the work, the steps taken to achieve it, the conversation with peers and the experience of creating that matter the most.



"The true profession of man is to find his way to himself" -Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse