stacy jo scott
eugene, oregon, usa
A couple of times in my life, because of a crisis or trauma, what is most deeply true, meaningful and life-giving has risen to the surface. This has been one such time. There is something about profound uncertainty or the inability to truly know a situation that leaves me open and more receptive.
I have oriented my state of unknowing to the daily routines of studio practice. I moved the essentials from my off-site studio to our home garage. These essentials include a pottery wheel, a clay printer, drywall surfaces to place over home furniture, studio chairs, an air compressor, an air filter, a Shop-Vac, buckets of soft clay, and buckets of water. In working from home, I’m finding that studio practice is weaving more integrally into my day-to-day life, which has expanded what studio practice feels like to me.
I know that this place of unknowing is profoundly fertile. While I find it difficult to stay in that place of unknowing and uncertainty for long I’m trying to act it out through processes that are experimental and materially pleasurable. I want these processes to root in my body, whether it is throwing porcelain on the wheel or drawing in clay through the 3D printer. Because my body and the material are here. Now. And in all of this destabilization, sorrow, anger, and fear, I can still know this body, this material, in this moment in time. They can be an anchor even as they themselves change.