A Bowl a Week for a Year!

It's time to present this year's artistic focus. I present you with bowls! Yes, those, most often, round items that you hold things with. I have pledged to create 1 bowl every week in 2014. Now, why bowls? Well, it started with a Lark 500 series book called 500 Bowls. I just love that series of books, I collect them all and have quite a good collection up to now. The bowls book came in my Christmas book box, the one I choose and buy for myself. This is a yearly tradition for me and it's my favorite present of all, from me to me!
So, while looking through this book, I was in awe of course, but I started seeing patterns in shape. To me, bowls resemble the female form in a big way. Then from there it didn't take much for my polymer clayier mind to jump to: "Hey, maybe I can make these in clay!" Needing a different focus to nourish my creative spirit I chose to try to make bowls and to see where it would lead. To give even further impetus I vowed to myself to make one a week for the year.
I have to admit that I am having way more fun than I should at this. Life outside my studio walls is a distraction from my "bowl time". Winter has been a wonderful culprit to keep me at home and creating. All that snow and ice is forcing me to stay home. I willingly defer to higher powers. Hi, hi!
In the photo below is one of my bowls, called Balance Bowl. He is named such because of something I discovered after he was baked and all done. I added feet to the bottom and when you turn him around on a table, depending on where the feet lie, he doesn't always balance. You have to put him in the right spot for him to stand flat. Now, I could have taken this as a sign of a fault in design or execution and of course it is. But I choose to interpret it as a life balance issue. I think that in life, we need to balance things just right to be able to stand upright, a little of this, a little further there and we are good to go. Of course that balance is fragile and can be upset easily. My bowl is a gentle reminder of that philosophy.