2002.1 - FLYING FISH

Every time I go on a snorkel trip in Maui, I see something new and exciting. On one of these trips, the boat we were in was accompanied by a school of these fish. They would pop out of the water, sail what seemed to me to be ten or twenty feet, and go back in. There seemed to be hundreds of them, and I was mesmerized. This fish was a real picnic to make because of the cantilevered nature of the wings. They are just begging to snap off… and the first time I made one of these, someone banged into it while it was waiting to be fired, and broke the wings. So I made another. Then, since we were in a temporary studio, I had to carry it across campus to the kiln. My son Michael helped. I was terribly nervous through the process, and it didn’t help when Michael said, “Hey look, a nickel!” Both my boys were fluent in sarcasm before they knew anything about what it is. I got this fish made in one piece, however, recently an errant ball did break off the wing. As one of my wise instructors says, ‘The difference between pottery and sculpture is glue.