“In the early aughts…I learned something that ought not to have been so difficult: pottery.”
Parker Posey’s 2018 memoir You’re on an Airplane is full of anecdotes, observations, and a chapter on her wheel throwing practice. She details how she studied at the La Mano ceramic studio in NYC, learning about clay bodies, wedging, centering and how to start pulling walls and throwing. Her description is surprisingly technical, but if you think of the book’s premise of Posey sitting next to you on an airplane telling you her life story, it makes sense.
On centering, she writes:
Your hand is listening now, keeping your mind’s eye centered as you push it down with the heel of your palm, still using your strength. You’re raising the phallus at the base and then pushing it down to the center of the wheel. It goes up, then it goes down; it goes up, then it goes down. It feels so amazing in your hands that you could do it for hours. It’s an erotic thing, what can I say?
She continues with the sensuality theme later in the chapter, and links it to bigger themes:
In the beginning, throwing was the best—getting into the sensuality of the clay and centering for hours. My mind would go right to the stars and into the dirt and think about how we’re so disconnected from where things actually come from—that there’s so much more energy in things and objects than we give them credit for. I’d think of cavemen, and the first cavewoman who threw a pot from a kick-wheel. I’d think of how excited and pleased she must’ve been, how hairy her eyebrows were, or if one of her caveman friends ever threw a pot at her, how quick she was to duck out of the way and how fun that was for everybody. There was a time when vessels held offerings to the gods, and we know this because we’ve seen those pictures painted in the pyramids. We see now, in museums, how clumsy and childish those relics were.
All in all, a pretty interesting take on the practice of wheel throwing. Check out the book if you’d like to read more about Posey’s ceramics instructor, the pottery sculptures she created, and many stories and anecdotes from her life and career.
You’re On An Airplane by Parker Posey
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Here’s a short video interview of Parker Posey on the wheel from 2013.
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