No Time for Art!

When I tell people that I do ceramics, a sizable portion of them tell me “I wish I had time” or “I used to do (crochet/stained glass/painting/fill in the blank) but I don’t have time now” and “I’ll get back to it when I retire”.  I feel for these people, I want to shake them and yell “the only time you have is now”.  Seize the day as they say. 

I used….

… to make….

… a lot…

…of clocks! (coincidence?)

It makes me feel sad for them, because ceramics is bringing so much joy in my life, I cannot imagine my existence without it. It’s made me more social by meeting other artists, more fearless by forcing me to get out of my comfort zone, organize markets, approach galleries and so on.

But more importantly , making art made me better at art.  There is no secret. Picasso allegedly said that genius is 5% inspiration and 95% sweat.  I think the 5% is rather inflated.  You get inspired if you work, and you get better if you work.  In ceramics especially, the learning curve can be overwhelming.  I’ll never have time to master all the techniques and all the possibilities but in a way, it is the beauty of this medium.  

Ceramics is my favorite activity now but it used to be traveling.  Getting older and having kids, I couldn’t move as much so I started creating stuff. The stuff you enjoy doing can be anything, but it has to be in your life even if it’s just a few hours a week.  You know that you made the right choice when you feel in the zone, in the moment, like time doesn’t exist and you get a dopamine rush from creating/learning something new.  Sometimes I spend two-three hours in the studio, and it feels like five minutes passed.  When I used to travel more, walking down an unknown street, observing and looking for the perfect picture made me forget about myself.  Weirdly enough you know that you used your time wisely when the time disappears.  You master time if you forget about it.

Wasting…

…time….

… making…

…clocks!

“Wasting your time” is a weird expression.  How can you define time wasted?  I think my kids waste their time playing video game, but I believe spending three hours reading a book is a perfect use of my time.  You’re the only one who will know what a good use of your time is. Ask yourself first: am I completely in the moment, not thinking about anything I need to do in the future, or something that happened today? Second: do I feel more relaxed afterward?

“I don’t have time” is an inaccurate statement.  We all (unless you have young kids) have more time than we think.  One easy way to get your time back is to sign up for a class.  In most cases, since you are paying, you will make the effort to go.  It could be an exercise class, an art class, a language class, anything. As long as you’re choosing to do it, you’re getting your time back.  It’s your choice.  And yes, maybe you’ll choose the wrong activity and get bored.  If so, you should try something else until you find the magical occupation that makes your time disappear while you’re doing it, and makes you feel relaxed after you’ve done it.   And even if you don’t find it, it will still be good for you to get out of your house.  If the pandemic was good for one thing, it was to realize that, however much you want to have time to relax at home, after a certain point it just becomes painful.

You don’t have to make art to be happy, you could choose to join a sport team or a gardening class. But one thing I enjoy about ceramics (and art in general) is that once I’m done with a piece, I have a tangible proof of how I used my time.  Look, I made this!  I know ceramists who never finish a piece, they go through the motion, either throwing or hand building a piece, and then they destroy it.  I am more materialistic. I like to hold a tangible token of the time I used up. Being officially middle-aged now, time has become a lot more precious to me.  One thing I miss about youth is how wasting time was never a worry, because we believed we had so much of it.  Scarce resources make you more cautious about how you spend it, but the contradiction of time is that you feel it was well spent when you didn’t see it go.